y %*> 



5,°-^ 
* +* 



«5°* 






*£>. 
^ 






/\ 





















V 




*► 

* 



,0 V 0°"°* o 



^ °^s 



• • » \ * 

A* 



^5 V 






o 



°o 



*«. 



^ 






'A v " 



V 



f ' <0 -7- 

y...A 



A 









oV 



Si 









' > 



w 



o 
-Z- 



), 









o • » - 



«5°* 




























o 










'bv 1 



V 















XT '\ 



/0 






•I o 



■A o 

>V ^ b % ^ ^ 






^ <• . 






^<5>. " 



^ 






J?^ 



^» ^^ 




TA<^ 






,♦* 






4ggK- %.,/ ;^ifr °- ^ • 



Ill': V** #|fe \/ 






"... 

•*• 









*o . » * ,0 O 

f> /O c ° " ° . "*b 







Q \ „ « , „ 



^ ^ ' «2 













^ ,<£ 















/°- ^°^. v'---' ' : -.-' ^ 

-y ^ N « °t- 



9 ^^ 



"^ 









"* 



^ 







"^o* 



c k 



,o v . 






V f • • < 






rt** 



"* 



"o, 






a. F* O 

V C\ 

















<?► » « ° .« 






^nT 



y 



\IIVNS^ 



/ 



^S 




i 















SF)e 



FIGS!! 






•:•:■ 



//'//// J. 6! Jolmson's i'oinpl i infills. 



■ 



G. £. (Uewl^kuPV 






TOPEKA, KANSAS 

A. S. JOHNSON 

t88 3 






©F?G 



• J?igmre 



r - --t 



>; 



•:•:• 



A, 



Bqqk 



By 






G? £. ©ewl^tupy 









TOPEKA, KANSAS 
A. S. JOHNSON 

iS.S- 



\ 



Enterril according to Vcl of I ongress, in the year 1883, 

I!v A. S. JOHNSON, 
in the office of the Librarian "f Congress, at Washington. 



Press of Knight & Leonard, Chicago. 
Cover by Globe Printing and Pi-bushing Co., Springfield, ■ pbio. 



f} ftJOF^D BEFOREHAND 

7^V"S V DEAR CHILDREN — for are we not all children in this matter 
\* I ' / of pictures? — the pages that have been written about Kansas would 
fill many hundred volumes. Its advantages have been extolled, its 
drawbacks exaggerated ; but praise or abuse long since ceased to affect its 
prosperity. Its name is probably on the lips of more people to-day than that 
of any other western state. It has won its place and it will hold it. Its past 
was tilled with adventure, its present is crowded with great achievements, its 
future no man can foretell. Favored alike by climate, natural resources, and 
geographical position, it is the wonderland of the West. It has friends innu- 
merable, — it makes new friends of all who come within its hospitable borders. 
Its cornucopia is overflowing with health and blessings. It educates its children 
in six thousand school houses. Its sturdy people give grateful thanks in a 
thousand churches. Thirty-nine hundred miles of railway bring comfort to 
its door and distribute its abundance. Four hundred clattering presses 
print a record of its growth. But there is a wide world about it which only 
partiallv understands how the Kansas of to-day differs from the commonwealth 
of yesterday. Those who may never visit the Arkansas Valley will, we trust, 
take some pleasure in this book; those who have doubted peradventure may 
become interested ; those who are not too old or too indolent may be tempted 
tn turn their faces westward. Having accomplished any one of which results. 
our end will be achieved. 




STATE CAPITOL, ToPEKA. 



(©ON^ENTS. 



Riding the Buffalo Down - 7 

An Intercepted Letter - - - 9 

Then and Now ------ 11 

At the Centennial - - - l.'S 

Dodge City 1 ; 

( A I I i.k 19 

Kansas City Stock Yards - - ".M 

SlIEEl 25 

Butter and Cheese - - - - 21 

The Story of a I >ug-< >ut - 29 

School Bells .'il 

Forest and Fruit Trees - - •'!:> 

Pretty Well, Thank Yov - '■'>'> 

The Bounty of the Earth - .'>; 

The Jones Ranch ----- 41 

Broom ('urn 4:> 

A Year's Work ----- 41 

Another Resource - - - - 4'.t 

Development - 53 

Rl I'll MIN., I he '• I >eser r" - ">."> 

Followers of Menno - - - 59 

An Illinois Farmer - - - 63 



Our Rivers 65 

Sorghum - - 61 

King Corn (lit 

A Natural Reservoir- - ',\ 

Hogs ^1 

A .Model Ranch ----- 73 

.\ln. en of Green Pasti re - - W> 

Cities of the Southwest - 77 

"Tattle oe the Day" - - - si 

Englishmen in Kansas - - 83 

Natural Roads ------ 83 

A Message from the North 85 

Sport on the Prairie - - - 81 

A Special Pi.ea SO 

Markets 9] 

Nor So Far Off - - - - HI 

Drawbacks ------- 93 

The Profits on Cattle - - 95 

From the Missouri West - - 1 1 » ~» 

How to Get Land - - - - L01 

Railroad Lands in Kansas - 109 

Sources of Information - - 111 




WDl'XIlED. 



Phd Kansas Picture- §ook. 



^=( V-^A V . . . 



Riding ^hb Buffalo Down, 



OING, going, going'," sounds along these miles of prairie as the 

vanishing' buffalo takes his uncouth body to other and wilder solitudes. 

A lew linger, but they will soon join the mammoth and the mastodon. 

Their doom is declared. Already the railroad has penetrated to their 

uttermosl haunts. Less fortunate than the Indian, more timorous than the 

covote, they are hounded outcasts on tin- face of the western world. The white 




BUFFALO TRAIL* IN WESTERN KANSAS. 



hunter pursues them to slaughter, and the red man (who, if he had one fiber of 
sentiment, would feel a heart-throb for his old-time friend and the present 
divider of his alienage) cuts down the herd with remorseless savagery. The 
number of the buffalo's sympathizers is not many, yet he lias some friends who 
are defending him and protesting against the indiscriminate slaughter in the 
Northwest. Though occasionally seen in Western Kansas, the shaggy, hump- 
backed vagrant has left his old grounds oil the Arkansas River for remoter 

7 



8 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



territory. The wild flowers bloom in the springtime on the margin <>t' his mud 
wallow, ami the grass grows green in the paths that he trampled, but there is 
none to sorrow at his going. His feeding ground has become the heritage of 
man's better friends, the sheep and steer. The rich gramma grass, once his 
sustenance, is their portion now. It was Fate that doomed the bison. For it 
hath been written in words of everlasting truth, that the earth and the fullness 
thereof were ffiven to the children of men. 




IJISTOKII GROUND: liREAT BKND, FROM PAWNEE ROCK. 



Till: KANSAS PICTURE HOOK. 



AlL ? 




pN INTERCEPTED LlE^ER. 



DEAR YOUNG FRIEND: You write that you have been fas- 
cinated by the stories of life on the plains, and want to turn cow-boy. 
nil arc restless, you say, under the conditions of restraint which 
surround existence in the older eastern cities. You despise social 
convention and the monstrous hypocrisy it engenders. You look more in sorrow 
than in anger mi the mad scramble for wealth — unpitying Moloch, as you 
call it — and the god- 
less struggle for power. 
Vim sigh for the per- 
fect freedom "i' the 
saddle, and the exhil- 
aration of a prairie 
breeze. The pictur- 
esque side of such a 
life also is not unat- 
tractive. You have a 
flannel shirt, a sombre- 
ro, a pair of corduroy 
trousers, and a similar complement of Wellington boots. Other necessaries 
could lie bought after arriving on the spot. Pistols and revolvers, you add, 
would be ii" extra expense, as you already have them. You are fond of sport, 
and an hour's chase after a buffalo would be diverting; while an occasional 
brush with the Indians, giving opportunity for personal combat, would suffuse 
a delicious aroma over the romantic career. This is what you write. We all 
labor under hallucinations of some sort, and you share an illusion common in 
cei lain quarters. 

Rut before I write- further, let me ask you to throw away the arsenal which 
\nii appeal- to possess, and advise von to get the pistol pocket ill your corduroy 
trousers se«n up, or utilize it for the less dangerous and more needful pocket 
book. After looking the ground over, you have chosen Kansas as the best 

lie M for a vou lie- man, and in I Ills \ on ha ve done wisely, the more so sin,-, you 
have capital to start with. Kansas is a better state now than it was when 
Greeley wrote his memorable advice, and you can make money faster, [do 
not want to discourage you, for your ambition to grow up with the country is 
a laudable one, but your impression of the border is altogether a mistake. In 
Kansas, at least, the day lias gone by when a lot of cow-boys could ride up the 



A KANSAS CATTLE ARTIST. 



10 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



main street ami "clean out the town," and the shoot-your-boot-heels-off quad- 
rille has likewise ''gone glimmering." Shoot a man in Kansas and you must 
pay the penalty of the law; assault or threaten him, you must do the same 
thing, although you may swagger offensively and get off with nothing worse 
than a good thrashing. There are sheriffs and jails and juries in the state, 
and it is well to remember that the first act when their services are needed, 
the second have thick walls, and the third convict. I exaggerate a little, but 
you exaggerated too, so we will cry quits and pass on. 

1 do not deny the charms of a cattle herder's life; indeed I have shared 
them, and I wish that this instant Thursday I were rocking in the saddle on the 
plains of Southwestern Kansas, instead of hived up in the house writing to you. 
I do not deny the charms, I say, but our acquaintance being considerable, I 
should not be doing my duty if 1 failed to tell you that in this matter again 
you deceive yourself. The charms of the life are potent, but you forget the 
long and irksome solitude, and the care and exposure. If you have courage and 
perseverance, and a stout heart to make sacrifices, in return for which a compe- 
tence will be adequate exchange, why, come on, you will do well in Kansas. 
Write to A. S. Johnson, at Topeka, or somebody else, for advice about a locatii in, 
before starting out. But whatever else you do, throw aside those silly notions 
about buffaloes and Indians and bandits, and be the sensible young fellow 1 
know you are. Then you may put your time ami money in the stock business, 
and they will yield you big increase, and alter you have lived a few months in 
Western Kansas you will thank me for my letter, and bless your own stars that 
you made no mistake in coming into the Arkansas Valley. 

I remain, my dear boy, ever yours, *■. 1'-. i. 




" 1 IKE'S PEAK OB l;i ST. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



11 



(9HEN AND ROW. 



HE artist wno rudely 1 >u t effectively lettered this sign was among the 
very first of western geniuses. Since his day, Worrall and a numerous 
company of accomplished designers have sprung up. The work they 
are doing is more luminous and 

aesthetic, perhaps, than that performed 

on this guide board, but it is noi likely 

the must gifted of them ever painted 

a picture giving greater satisfaction to 

the beholder. Toilers over the old trail 

endured hardships little dreamt of in a 

generation which travels by steam and 

talks by lightning. What wind-vexed 

wastes they crossed ami what perils 

they encountered, let no man say save 

him who shared their privations. With 

what joy must the weary emigrant, 

in the heat of i n or the fatigue of 

nightfall, have read the tidings thai one 

mile to the right or left, or one mile 

ahead, beyond the bluffs, the trail struck 

the new railroad, and that food and 

water were there. Generally in those regions the fateful mirage pictured 

green fields, and houses, and broad sheets of cool water to the traveler, leading 

him on to disappointment. But here was a better omen, alike discernible in 

clear or cloudy weather, promising nothing it did not fulfill, and luring none to 

his undoing. In Kansas the sign is now gone forever, gone like the border, as 

Deane Monahan saw it. "with its strange people, its curious life, its ruffianly 
chivalry, its tragic deaths." The sign no longer exists, but the bottle and the 
sardine box and the tomato can remain. These will noi perish off the face 
of the earth while the express train speeds Over its granite bed, or the 

pioneer tells the story of his youthtime to the children at his knee. 

It may be observed, though this is not to the purpose, thai wanderers 
meeting with this sign did not ad as tie- Irishman is said to have done, who 
arriving at a cross-road and being in doubt as to the right direct ion. took down 
the guide-board and carried it along with him, to prevent a mistake. 




A FRIEND or THE PAST. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



13 



prir rpHB (©ENTENNIAL. 



I 



T may seem late at this day to refer to whal Kansas 'liil at the Centen- 
nial — it may seem late, because in the years that have since passed into 
her history she has developed a growth and virile strength beside which 
former achievements appear only as a beginning. But if the Centennial 




K\N~.V-. r.l.l.l. ii' INDEPENDENCE. 



is an event of the past, the memory of ir is still a living thing, and we may 
fairly presume thai no impression of the Great Fair remains clearer in the 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 15 



mind of the American people than the noteworthy Kansas ami Colorado dis- 
play. Summon from out their lurking-places in your memory the recollections 
of those days. Bid the shadows stand. What do they discover ? A confus- 
ing sense of Bigness everywhere, a glitter of color, a mingling of strange 
people, and glimpses of ;i stranger life. A few less fleeting memories remain. 
Tin' great and silent Corliss engine whose throbbing heart pulsed all the rest, 
perhaps a memorable picture in the Art Gallery or a whimsical statue, some 
special feature in one of the foreign courts, and the Kansas display. Is it not 
so? And the impalpable procession vanishes — "come like shadows, so depart." 

A catalogue of the native products that appeared in the Kansas building 
would extend over a good many pages. Our illustrations will recall the rare 
combination of material and the blending of color which made its interior no 
less a marvel of decorative effect than an eloquent advocate of the Arkansas 
Valley, where so many great things have since been accomplished. Of tin rail- 
road exhibit the state made acknowledgment in these words: "It was the logic 
of nature — of facts — arrayed in tie- poetry of art. It made a summer's long 
and never-to-be-forgotten pica for Kansas. Converts and willing captives have 
been coming by every train since then, rilling the Southwest with a hardy and 
industrious population." The great bell hung, as many will recollect, from the 
cupola over the Capitol fruit clonic in the rotunda. This trophy was a fac 
similt of the old Independence Bell, exact even to the craek down the side. 
It was over eight feet and a half in height, nearly nine feet in diameter at 
the rim, and was composed solely of the state's own products, the material 
including broom-corn stalks, millet, wheat-straw, sorghum, and flaxseed. The 
tongue was a '"Hercules ( 'lub " gourd, seven feet long and four inches thick, 
the clapper a " Bucket " gourd, eighteen inches in diameter. 

The old bell, of which this rustic composition was a copy, proclaimed 
"Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." Its day 
and deed belong to the past. But tin 1 Kansas bell of Independence is ringing 
still to gladden the hearts of men everywhere — men who would be free but 
possibly cannot, who are badly paid and little employed in cities, who are 
working agains! odds in older states where land is scarce and the chances of 
a competence arc measurably less, who in other climes neither own the land 
fchey till and the flocks they tend, nor share in the profits of their toil, and for 
whose children tin-re is no past except of oppression, no future except of sorrow 
and bitterness — ringing, ringing, ringing. And the peal is wafted onward, 
inviting the strength and labor of the world to a New Home. 




Ilil — i 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



17 



Dodge (sijpy. 



DODGE — who needs to be t«>M about Dodge? It has ;i reputation for 
cattle and cussedness — polite ears will be shocked, but one does no! 
associate overmuch refinement with the home of the cow-boys, in spite 

of well established scl Is, churches, literary societies and other moans, 

of culture, — the wickedest pla< the border, whose sinfulness the "unco' 

guid" speak of with upturned eyes and palms rolled outward. But the law 
now reigns at Dodge, though the wild name of the olden camp survives. 
While the city grows apace, its reputation has remained stationary. Dodge 
has shared the common 
experience of frontier 
t< iwns — first a season i if 
\ ii lence and disorder, 
then a change to more 
orderly and conserva- 
tive things. A con- 
stant border inter- 
course has nevertheless 
left its impress on 
the place. Though 
traces <>i' the old life 
remain, and men do 

occasionally die with their boots on, the reputation of tin- station as a cattle 
shipping point has in no wise waned. Tin- drive last spring embraced 300,000 
head. This year it will be quite as large as in 1882, ami will include more 
young cattle. Favorite ranches stretch out from the Arkansas at this point in 
all directions. The country being broken, the ground covered with gramma 
grass, and water abundant, no better cattle range is to be found on the conti- 
nent. Add to these advantages a practically boundless range, and a mild 
climate, giving freedom from mountain storms, and one can understand why 
so much capital is being attracted towards Western Kansas as a cattle Held. To 
see Dodge City in all its glory, however, the stranger should visit it in the fall, 
when t he cattle are being driven in for sale. Then shall In- find the cattle at their 

best, I the cow-boys at their worst, and encounter, it maj be, an interesting 

ad\ enture. 




Tin-: drive. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. I'd 




(©AWLE. 



'HE remarkable demand for cattle ranches in Southwest Kansas continues 
unabated. Nor is the demand so remarkable after all, when it is borne 
in mind that no other business has been tried in this country which can 
show proportionately large and certain profits, and the same immunity 
from disaster, and considering furthermore, that Kansas is almost the only state 
offering range to small holders. "Cattle kings" are few in tin- Arkansas 
Valley. The man coming into it to engag - e in the business does not find the 
privileges in the hands of two or three, or half a dozen great companies, mon- 
opolizing whole counties. He finds ample water and grass, and few or no 
quarrelsome neighbors. He is near the market, and can ship his stock when 
the best opportunity presents itself. In other words, he can carrj on the busi- 
ness with every possible advantage, and under as few of the disadvantages as 
may be. It is not a land "boom," nor a railroad "boom," no]- an immigration 
"boom," nor any sort of a speculative movement, that is turning the eyes of 
farmers, stockmen and investors towards the prairies of Kansas. The wonder- 
ful grasses were not planted by the band of man, nor did the springs and 
creeks start into rippling life at his bidding. The pure air, mild winters, and 
consequent freedom from epidemic diseases, were not of his creating. But 
there they are, and the buffalo which once enjoyed them has been driven afield. 
"As I have perambulated this state to some extent, and met many inquiring 
ones, and had to answer a multiplicity of questions concerning Western Kan- 
sas," writes a correspondent of the Kansas Farmer, "I wish to say through 
the medium of your paper that there is no question nor the least risk in going 
directly to Western Kansas with stock to coin money. It is the best adapted 
region on this continent for these simple facts : stock ranges the whole year as 
a general thing; secondly, the nutritious buffalo grass is all that is required to 
put them up to a beef standard; and last but not least, little attention is 
required to hold them. The ranee, next to be considered, is all you wish. 
Western Kansas is last filling up with cattle. Men with means of from *."illll to 
$10,000, and even more, are to be found doubling their investment and last 
replenishing their exchequer. Now, gentle reader, this is not gammon moon- 
shine, bu1 the truth without husk or chaff, ami the sooner you leave your pent- 
up location in the East the better it will be for your finances." 

The merits of cattle raising itself are so generally known ami widely recog 
nized that little need exists of further effort to induce capital. The business 
already has the popular eye and ear. The philosopher reminds us that the world 



20 THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 

is filled with uncertainty; but amid the general doubt this much is certain, that 
said eye and car have never had more honest audience. The production of 
corn, wheat, cotton and other staples may add more to the wealth of a nation 
in the aggregate, but as a rule the stock interests have in all times brought 
must wealth to the individual farmer. It was so in olden times, it is so now, 
and it will continue so to the end. The Hon. J. B. Grinnell, of Iowa, who has 
spent his life on a farm, has the following- to say of the opportunities of cattle 
raising: "After a quarter of a century of observation, conducted amid all the 
ups and downs of the market in that time, 1 know of no sober, painstaking 
breeder or raiser of cattle who lias failed by reason of the season, or its bring- 
ing of drought, food, or frost, or who has failed to find a fair return for his labor 
in his improved herds, not only attaining full compensation, but in many 
instances a competency for old age." Southwest Kansas, owing to the 
adaptability of its tame grasses, the luxuriant growth of its prairie grasses and 
their fattening properties, its immense crop of corn grown at a minimum cost, 
its unrivaled markets, together with its temperate winters and long grazing 
season, unites more of the essential elements of a successful cattle country 
than any other known to the stock raise]- to-day. It is the. custom among many 
of the Texas cattle men to drive their herds into Kansas to fatten for the 
market. The buffalo grass, which is the Favorite range, has remarkable stav- 
ing properties, and its wide spreading area makes the Kansas prairies generally 
sought after by stockmen of other states. It forms a splendid feed the year 
round, as it cures on the ground and affords winter grazing. The quantity 
is abundant — so abundant thai one acre in the Arkansas Valley pastures as 
much as three acres do in Texas, Colorado or New Mexico. An acre will 
therefore carry three times as many cattle. 

All estimates of the number of stock upon the western cattle ranges are 
more or less conjectural, but the subjoined table will give an idea of the 
increase in the organized counties of Kansas since 1876, the unorganized 
counties, which have always held and still contain large herds, remaining 
unrepresented : 

Y< ar. Number of Cattle. Value. 

lxTii 700,634 $15,830,672.00 

is:; 780,988 17,650,328.80 

1878 872,243 19,865,508.40 

1879 976,643 24,401,172.00 

1880 1,109,731 37,743,275.00 

issi 1,246,457 31,161,425.00 

1882 1,404,488 42,134,640.00 

Write to A. S. Johnson, Topeka, Kansas, for a free pamphlet on the sub- 
ject. We will wager a silk hat against a last year's bird's nest that you will 
be ready to leave the workshop or farm immediately ami go into the business. 



77/// KANSAS PICTURE lionK. 



21 



Kansas (©ijpy Stog^ I/a^ds. 




HE live stock trade of Kansas City, for the year 1882, is estimated a< 
165,000,000. < >l' all the conspicuous gains the increase in the receipts 
of cattle stands out as the most remarkable, and in sectional growth as 
attested by the figures of the year's work, the most healthful and grati- 
fying was manifested by Kansas. The full table while interesting- would lie 
inappropriate in this place. An analysis of the figures shows from what territory 
the hulk of the live stock is shipped in. Twelve competing lines reporl total 
receipts of 439,671 head of cattle, of which number the Atchison, Topeka and 
Santa Fe Railroad brought in 207,574 head, and the Kansas City, Lawrence and 




KANSAS CIT! Mil: STOCK EXCHANGE. 



Southern, a part of the Santa Fe system, L09.988 — together, a total of i 
fourths of the cattle shipped. The tallies show also that these two roads 
carried one-half of all the sheep sent in. Of course a part of the stock 
represented came from New Mexico and other territory tributary to the 



• ).; 



THE KANSAS I'liTVUK BOOK. 




Till-: KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



S3 



modern "Colossus of Roads," hut the figures indicate pretty truly the reg 

i.r the West where stock raising is mos< successful. 

Tin- Mock yards at Kansas City are commodious and well appointed, with 

unlimited capacity lor f ling, weighing and shipping. All the gnat rail- 
roads entering the city run through tin- yards, and the market is, therefore, of 
easy access to the great feeding grounds of Kansas, Nebraska and the South- 
west. The business of the yards is done systematically and without delay. In 
connection, there is a horse and nude market where that class of stock is 
dealt with in large numbers. 

The Stock Yards Company have erected a large modern brick exchange 
building, including thirty-four offices for commission men and two banks. 





VIEW IN llli i; I OUNTY. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK 




Sheep. 



'HE town of Lamed, in Pawnee county, Southwestern Kansas, is the 

center of the mosl i siderable wool-growing district in the state. 

Sheep-raising is extensively carried on in other counties, but for a 
distance of seventy-five miles in the Upper Arkansas Valley, — saj 
Great Bend to Kinsley, — it is the chief industry, and it is here the flock- 
master will come who expects to make the largest profit. Both country and 
climate wore made for sheep. The native grasses are rich in nourishing 
qualities, the famous gramma variety retaining its fattening elements during 
the winter. Water is pure and constant at a no greater depth than twenty-five 
foil. The soil has perfect natural drainage. Suitable land for ranges is 
chia]) and plentiful, and above all the climate is favorable to sheep life. The 
air is light and dry, anil the latitude insures freedom from extremes of heal 
and cold. An equally great advantage is the abundance of cheap winter feed 
at hand, removing even the possibility of climatic risk, and bringing the sheep 
through the winter in good shape. The best sheep men provide shelter and 
feed for winter, because it pays to do so, as extra care insures heavier fleeces 
and a larger percentage of increase. .Mr. W. G. Markham, president of the 
National Wool Growers' Association, in a letter to Judge Dusinberre, of 
Geneva, X. Y., on his visit to Lamed, says: "I was greatly surprised to find 
the sheep in so fine a condition, subsisting on the pasturage of the country, 
without fodder or grain. I doubt if any section can be found possessing more 
advantages, all things considered, for sheep and wool-growing." 

With the business vet in its infancy, there are now, at a fair estimate, 
2,000,000 head of sheep in Kansas, and the number and quality of the flocks 
arr being increased yearly. The development of the agricultural resources of 
tin- state is without parallel. The wheat and corn crops have attained to re- 
markable proportions, but the growth of sheep-husbandry has eclipsed these, 
and the strides forward have been taken without detriment to the business. 
Each year finds the flocks of the state better graded and cared for than ever 
before. It is a hopeful sign Eor the future that thorough-bred bucks are being 
universally used to improve the quality of the herds. Grade Merinos are the 
hardiest and most profitable sheep for Kansas. The men who a few years ago 
drove in flocks of Mexicans, now hold graded sheep, and advise new-comers 
not to start as they did but to buy better animals. Without exception, the) 
say truly that had they commenced with a higher grade they could have made 
more money. For a man with limited capital, sheep are a better investment 



26 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



than cattle, but they require more care. Less range is necessary, and the 
profits come sooner. A man going into the southwestern counties need m>t 
buy largely of land at first. He can take a railroad tract for his corrals 
and enough to secure him some range, then have free range over adjoining 
unoccupied lands. The smaller the capital the slower will be the progress 
toward independence, but the wealth is sure to come in good time. "Whereon 
the foot of sheep touches," says the Spanish proverb, "is turned to gold," 
and it is certain the sheep has found no more congenial, healthful home than 
K.i nsas. 

The profits, as returned by the farmers themselves, are from 'l'i to •"><) per 
cent, per annum — oftentimes more. 







A THOROUGHBRED. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



27 



Butter and (©heese. 




HERE are not i-ri'a uiL'i'ii-s imii >uii'li in Kansas. As the present tendency 
among western fanners is more towards stock and diversified agriculture, 
the production of butter and cheese is increasing. Yet it is far from 
adequate to the demand. Good butter and cheese find a ready market. 

The local consumption is large, while from the mining camps of Colorado and 

New Mexico there is a 

ne\ er-lessening demand. 

Ask the keeper of the lit- 
tle adobe grocery in the 

southern territories where 

he nets his butter, his 

eggs, his chickens, his 

farm produce of all kinds — 

oftentimes even his milk, 

for there are refrigerator 

cars on western roads — DAIEV FARM. 

and he will answer you 

without hesitation, Kansas. Of bad butter there is always enough and to spar. 

in the world, but even that does not go a-begging in the West ; while the 

maker of a prime article finds a dozen markets open to him. Twenty-five cents 
per pound is a fair average price the year through, and in estimating on such a 
basis it should be borne in mind how much less land ami feed cost in Kansas 
than In other states, where, although the market price is higher, the profits are 
really less. Already there are successful cheese factories and creameries in 
Southwest Kansas, but more can be worked to advantage. 





BY THE WAYSIDE. 






:- , titoa 









'■"i 







THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



29 



<9HE S^OI^Y OP A DUG-OUT. 




'HOUGH the dug-out is still a common sight in Kansas, it disappears as 
settlement advances. Nothing could better illustrate this progress than 
the following story. 

Twelve vears ago, when an appraisement was being made of the land 
grant of the A. T. & S. F. R. R., one of the party wandered far from camp on 
a Sunday night. It was too late to, return, for darkness had overtaken him, 
and seeing a dug-out in tin- distance, lie sought its friendly shelter for the 
night. 

Rude as the house 
was, its occupants 
appeared to be peo- 
ple of gentle breed- 
ing. The scant fur- 
niture was well dis- 
posed. A small organ 
had its place, and 
around it were gath- 
ered a family of chil- 
dren singing- to their 
mi ither's accompani- 
ment. 

Greeting was given the stranger which he can never forget, for even at this 
distance of time he looks back upon that evening as one of the pleasantest in 
a life filled with stirring memories. The conversation drifted naturally on to 
home matters. 

■•We have come from Michigan, where we lost everything, to get a new 
start in the world, if possible, far out on these plains," said the mother, her 

Voice trembling with suppressed emotion. 

"Are yon contented?" asked the guest. 

•■ Yes" -lie replied, "we try to be, and I think succeed. We have taken up 
a homestead here, and in time I hope we can regain what has been lost. 

The children had by this time bei le interested in the stranger and took 

notice of him. 

" What we miss most," the mother contil 1. "and what makes me dissatis- 
fied sometimes, is tie- absence of a school lor our little ones. Back home — for 
we still call it home — they had a teacher of whom they were very ( 1, and 




- •- •-*! ■-*■ 

RAWHIDE-FRONTED DUG-OUT- 



WESTERN KANSAS. 



30 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 




gkj sS-ti 



^MMWL^Jm^M 




THE NEW SETTLEMENT. 



who was very fond of them, and th<' sorrow was mutual at parting. But I sup- 
pose school advantages will come after some years, and until they do I must 
make a poor substitute for the old schoolmistress." 

" From my experience of frontier life," interrupted the listener, "] should sax- 
it would not he so many years as you think before you have your school, nor yet 
so many before you have repaired the losses that brought you to Kansas." 

" We had an excel- 
lent church at home, 
and our church rela- 
tions were of t he most 
kindly soil." 

No other words 

were spoken save g I 

night. 

< hie \ear later, his 
camp life ended, the 
appraiser revisited the 
scene of that night's 
hospitality, which it may interest some readers to know lay a little south of the 
now flourishing town of Peabody. He had not forgotten his former enter- 
tainers, and was interested to know of their success or failure. 

The dug-out was gone. On its site stood a trim white cottage. Eighty acres of 

the land adjoining was fenced and improved. The open prairie, which a year before 

the coyotes had peopled with their howlings, was now dotted with farm houses. 

A warm welcome awaited him. Again the talk turned on home affairs — 

the change in the aspect of things was too marked to be passed by. 

"We have thought often lately" — it was the father who spoke this time — 
"of what you said to us on that pleasant Sunday night twelve months ago. We 
are doing well in Kansas, as you predicted. The store which you see from tin- 
window is mine and not far off is a post-office." A school-house was near. 

" You see that," said the wife, pointing; toward it with pride, "and do you 
remember what I told you about the favorite teacher back in Michigan?" 
"Yes,'' came the assenting answer, "1 do, and I remember." 
" Well, the old schoolmistress is here, and she teaches our children. And 
do you recollect my words about our former church? Already we have a con- 
gregation organized, and services are held each Sunday in the school-housi . with 
the old pastor to lead in praise and prayer. And in these houses around us are 
many, if not most, of all the old friends we left in .Michigan." 

This is all the story. It is true to the letter, and proves for the thousand- 
and-first time what none of us who have lived long in the world would ask to 
have proved, that truth is stranger than fiction. 



Till-: KANSAS PICTURE Hooh: 



31 



Sghool Bells. 




'HOSE great eivilizers, the school house and locomotive, have wrought 
their wonders in Kansas. In the whole stretch of the Upper Arkansas 
Valley there is no section, or quarter section, even, of land so much out 
of the world that a school house is not within practicable distance. 
Throughout the Valley the little white knowledge-boxes everywhere add beauty 
to the natural loveliness of the prairie scene, while in the larger cities the pub- 
lic school buildings are substantial, commodious and elegant. It is believed in 




KANSAS STATE ISM EOSITV. 



Kansas that children well taught in the needful branches of learning make 
better men and women. They certainly make happier ones. It is believed 
that an education is the best worldly inheritance a parent can give his children. 
Colleges and seminaries flourish. The State University is located at Lawrence, 
and for such as wish to pursue their studies beyond the common school and 
academic courses, here is a most excellent institution with competent teachers, 



32 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



£&L£ £Z5££El r ,ruc,io ", ,or ■ — ""-■ ti » 




THE MODERN KANSAS FORT. 



t^JZt!^T h 1 ''I tHe la " d hl the State h3S b6e " donated b v the gen- 

Sa- Fe R a iJ road Company contnlnit _ ^ £££»• tl^ol 

tS;:; S 7^ ^ » the support or the schools f^ 

s-ttits o/tb lr 1Cndld la,Kl ^^ » ^ d the -„ le as it would 'he were 



1'U /■: KANSAS PICTCRK BOOK. 



33 



FOI^ESrF AND Fl^UlT <£>I^EES. 




HE timber in Kansas, except where trees have been planted, is found 
principally along the banks of streams, the timber belts growing nar- 
rower and lighter towards the west. The native trees include black 
walnut, hickory, cottonwool], 

oak, sycamore, haekberry, elm, maple, 

willow, ash, box elder, and locust, and 

the wood is used both in manufactures 

ami for fuel. Some varieties make 

timber large enough to burn in five 

years from planting. Many of the early 

settlers get abundant fuel from trees 

of their own growth. In a lew years 

more we may safely predict that the 

supply of fuel from cultivated timber 

in Southwestern and South Central Kan- 
sas will be sufficient for the wants 

of the population. A ton of coal and 

a cord of good wood bring about equal 

prices in the market. Osage orange is 

universally used for hedges. The cost 

to the farmer is nominal, and in four 

years from the time of planting, such a 

hedge will successfully turn stock. 

Timber culture in Kansas has been 

encouraged by state enactments, as well 

as by act of cong-ress. At first tree 

planting was attended with but little 

success, l>ui with experience better 

results have followed, and there are 

now many counties dotted with minia- 
ture forests of from one to thirty acres on' a farm. Since the settlement of 

tie' state, 14ii,iiiiii acres of forest u s havi bei n sel out, the majority of them 

under the timber culture act, although a number of thousand have been Started 

by fanners and otliers who had no timber claim. Tin- Atchison, Topeka & 

Santa 1- •'■ Railn >ad < !< impany employed a forester for several \ ears, who, to settle 

the question whether trees could grow to the extreme western limits of Kansas. 

planted many thousand cuttings, which have since grown well, and now beau- 




A YEAH S GROW I'll. 



:;4 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



tify the towns along the line of its road. An extended reference to his work 
is found in the " Report on the Forestry of Mississippi Valley and Tree Plant- 
ing on the Plains." made by special commission to the Commissioner of Agri- 
culture at Washington. As prairie fires become less frequent, and the hygro- 
metric condition improves with the advance of civilization, the wooded areas 
extend by self-planting. There are no data to show how great this spontaneous 




PRODUCTS ()K THE "TREELESS PRAIRIE. 

growth has been, but the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, from 
whom other statistics have been obtained, makes a rough estimate of 20 per 
cent, of the number of acres. 

The number of fruit trees in tin- state' is as follows: 

Bearing. Non-bearing. 

Apple 3,028,110 3.59(1.:::;:; 

Pear 97,369 164,302 

Peach 5,983, 1 W 4,089.803 

Plum 293.47-1 339,516 

Cherry 764, 198 756,5 76 

Total .' 11,169,597 8,940,931 

11, Kill 597 
Grand total oi nr varieties 20,110,128 

This is a tolerable showing Cora new and treeless state "that won't grow 
anything" — 10,000,000 peach trees and 0,500,000 apple trees, and more than 
half of them in bearing. 



77//; KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



35 



I^ETWY &5ELIj, (§HAN^ y0U. 



HN Illinois editor came to Kansas last summer to look around. I il i 
everybody else who comes, he saw a ".Teat deal thai surprised him. 
Hi.s own confession is thai he came with a prejudice, expecting to find 
Kansas the ragged edge of civilization, with a low class of settlers 
ready to pull up and move at a moment's notice, provided they could stop 

shaking long- enough. What did he find? A people and civilizati :om- 

mensurate with the possibilities of what he calls the besl agricultural and 
stock raising country he had ever seen. "No ague, no shakes, no lawless- 
ness, good society, good schools and churches, the people happy, and no grave 
yards to speak of." This gentleman was the editor of the Bloomington Appeal, 
whose travels "have taken hint over at least Two-thirds of the United States." 
He was right, too, about it. On the beautiful upland plateau of western Kan- 
sas, sloping from the west towards the rising sun, malaria and its pestiferous 
train of ills are unknown. If this book wen- an advertisement of St. Some- 
body's oil or Dr. I onglock's compound elixir of concentrated catnip (name blown 
in every bottle, none others genuine), we might publish testimonials from many 
men who have been relieved or wholly cured of pulmonary disorders by vao\ tng 
to Kansas. Instead, we will quote from a private letter written by an old 
army surgeon who left a thirty-years' practice in New York state and came to 
Lamed two years ago. "I moved here," he says regretfully, "expecting lots 
of malarial and rheumatic patients, but I have found the region very healthy, 
and nothing to fill the pockets of the physician." If the doctor had turned 
Ins time and undoubted talents to sheep, cattle, or hog raising, or to diversified 
farming, he would, although an old man, have found something to fill his 
purse. \ es, we've gol the ozone. 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



37 



©he Bounty op the €ai^th. 



W 



EX have sometimes murmured because they •have failed in Kansas, 
usually through their own waywardness, to accomplish all they pic- 
«) I (5 tared in hours spent a-dreaming, instead of at the plow or by the 
sheep-fold; on the other hand, men have told stories of their 
prosperitv here that do rival the recitals of the Vizier's Daughter. But what- 
ever may be said of the fertility or poverty of Kansas soil — and on this ques- 
tion there can be but on.- opinion — the abundance or lack of seasonable rains, 
the heat or cold of the climate, the gentleness or fierceness of the winds, it is 
certain, as the Hon. John A. Anderson observes in his sketch of Kansas Agri- 
culture, that the best evidence on these and all other points of practical interest 
to the farmer is that furnished by the crops actually raised or failed to be 
raised. There is abundant material to draw from in this matter, for the state 
has machinery for collecting the facts and making them plain. Vet in writing 
about the products of Kansas farms it is necessary to deal with figures of great 




WHEAT LANDS IN PAWNEE COUNTY. 



magnitude. It is difficult to realize the meaning of millions; it is easier to 
count by tens, or even by thousands, but Kansas has grown out of her thou- 
sands as a winsome girl grows out of her 'teens. 

The state raises every field crop that will grow in a temperate climate, and 
many, like cotton, that are indigenous to semi-tropical regions. Wheat, cor,,, 
oats, rye, sorghum, broom-corn and flax are staples. The value of the splen- 
did and abundant grasses, wild and tame, is incalculable, as no record can lie 
made of the uncounted tons gathered by the farm animals themselves in every 
season of the rolling vear. The grass crop, green and dry, is worth more 
than any other in this country, and Kansas is contributing her share. The 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 39 

increase in the breadth (if grass lands is one of the most striking features of 
her agricultural returns. The total value of farm products in 1882 exceeded 

*]5o,o0o,ooo. Tliis is the latest computati supplied by the State Board of 

Agriculture, as it appears in the new biennial report, now passing through 
the press. Of this aggregate $108,000,000 is put down to Held products, *l I, 
000,000 to increase in the value (not the value itself, be it remarked) of farm 
animals. $27,500,000 to products of live stock, $500,000 to market produce, and 
over $1,500,000 to horticultural products. 

The wheat area of the year covered upwards of 1,500,000 acres, yielding a 
product of 35,000,000 bushels, an average yield of twenty-three bushels to the 
acre. 4,500,000 acres were under corn, and the product was 157, (.100,000 bush- 
els, which ranks Kansas fourth in t lie Union as a corn-growing state. 529,000 
acres sown to oats produced 22,000,000 bushels, and the average yield may 
be easily worked out. Allusion is made elsewhere to the magnitude of the 
broom-corn ami sorghum crops, and the profits thereon. 56,700,000 pounds of 
the former were marketed. The product of rye amounted to 4,450,000 bushels. 
and of rlax to 1,650,000 bushels. ISoo.ooO bushels of sweet potatoes were ilug. 
Cotton and tobacco cut a figure among the lesser returns. 

It is interesting to note the different scopes of country contributing to this 
aggregate wealth. To make a general division, the southern half of the state 
may be set down as being most productive and best suited to g-eneral husband- 
ry. Through this prolific section runs the steel backbone of the great Atchi- 
son, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. And of the south central counties the 
Arkansas Valley belt makes a showing that eclipses all the rest. In such 
matters, figures and the testimony of living witnesses are the only guides on 
which to base a comparison, and the home seeker, after looking into the matter 
for himself, cannot come to any other decision than that flu r< is the best place 
for him to build his home. There lie may share in the general prosperity 
which is animating the old Santa Fc trail with a new life, healthier, stronger, 
and more enduring' than when its path through the long reaches of the silent 
\ alley was only a highway for wagon-trains and Indian warriors. There lie 
may grow him a fortune without going into a frigid and inhospitable wilder- 
ness. There he may send his children to day school and Sunday school. 
There he may live his life — and Heaven grant it be a long one — surrounded 
by the joys and comforts of his new fortune. 

One-sixth of the population of Kansas have found homes within the Land 
Grant of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fc Railroad. The state has an area 
of 52,1 .hod acres, of which only 1 1,043,379 are under cultivation. With four- 
fifths of her land untouched by the plow, Kansas has room lor several millions 
more people, and she will have them — probably in your time and mine, if not, 
then in our children's 



Tin: KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 41 



<9HE CLONES I^ANGH. 



EICH men have various ways of enjoying their wealth. Mr. S. F. Jones 
made his money in Colorado, whither he went from Texas in 1869 to 
engage in the cattle business. When the ranch and stock at Las 
Animas, owned by himself and brothers, were sold to the Prairie 
Cattle Company in lsso, his share of the purchase price amounted to an inde- 
pendent fortune. 

A vear before this, however, Mr. Jones had moved to Kansas, with the inten- 
tion of spending the rest of his life amid the comforts which such a state 
can afford, satisfied that he had found the best place in the West for gratifying 
a life-long- desire to establish a stock-farm for the breeding of blooded cattle. 
He bought a small farm on Fox Creek, about three miles from Strong City, in 
Chase county, and commenced buying land of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe Railroad. His farm now covers 7000 acres, the whole of which is enclosed 
by a stone fence five feet high and two and a-half feet thick, costing about 
$20,000. The entire tract is well watered, and altogether we may say that this 
is the best improved ranch in the state. 

There are upon it at present about .500 high-grade and thoroughbred cattle, 
mostly Herefords, Shorthorns, and Polled Angus. One pasture containing 5000 
acres last year grazed 1200 head, and the owner estimates that he now has 
$3000 worth of steers ready lor market. Thirty-eight Hereford bull calves 
have already been disposed of at $70 per head. The sales of hogs thus far this 
season (Spring, 1883), aggregate $2,500. 

In the Spring of 1881 Mr. Jones commenced the erection of the stone resi- 
dence, barn, and out-buildings, shown in the view of his farm on the opposite 
page. The material was taken from a quarry on the grounds, and in less 
than a year the improvements were completed. The residence, standing on a 
terraced slope facing the east, is a mansion in architecture and appointments. 
All the principal apartments an- supplied with soft and spring water. The 
floors are laid with Brussels and velvel carpets, while large and costly mirrors, 
and the selection of appropriate furniture for the various rooms, witness the 
good taste no less than wealth of the proprietor. 

Outside, one hundred feet to the west, is a reservoir with a capacity of 
11,000 barrels, led by three springs several hundred feet distant. From 
the spring-house an arched underground passage conducts to the kitchen of 
the house. 

Tin' barn is a mammoth structure, L0Sx60 feet, three stories high, and so 



42 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



arranged that a four-horse train can drive on to any floor and turn 'round with- 
out difficulty. The first story is occupied by the owner's horses and a selection 
of his best cattle. Among the farm machinery in the building are a feed 
cutter, corn sheller, corn mill, and threshing machine, all of which can be run at 
one time if necessary by power furnished l>v a double wheel, thirty-foot wind 
engine. Residence, barn, and out-buildings cost $30,000. A cut stone fence, 
with iron railings, encloses the house and grounds. 

The owner of this vasl estate is a man of fifty-six years of age, noted for 
his integrity, u-ood nature, and unbounded hospitality: an enthusiast in all 
matters relating, no matter how, to the stock possibilities of Kansas. That he 
should have made the greater part of his purchase of the Atchison, Topeka and 
Santa Fe Kailroad — coming to the state as he did when land was more abundant 
than it is now, and with the additional advantage which monev and a knowl- 
edge of the West imply — is much in praise of the railroad lands, and to the 
credit of the company's way of doing business. 




LOOKING UP TUE WALNUT VALLEY FROM BISSIL'S POINT. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



43 



Bl^OOM (i>01^N. 



(,/" I PARAGRAPH goes the rounds of the country papers each season, 

I— —I thai Kansas broom corn is bringing- the highest figures in the Chicago 

pj * 1 market. Nol only .Iocs the broom-corn plant grow to greatest beauty 

ami perfection here, but .Kansas is among the very few states, if not 
the only one, which can bring the corn to maturity, and at the same time 
secure the color. Let the brush turn red and half its commercial value is gone. 
In southwest Kansas no man who will attend to his business, harvesting his 
corn at the proper time, can possibly fail in securing a good green color, and 




READ'S To i I'T. 

consequently in producing a brush sought after in every market, commanding 
the highest price both at home and abroad. The secret lies in the climate. 
Like sorghum, broom corn requires a warm, dry atmosphere; even drought 
affects it but slightly. This granted, all that is required is a fair intelligence 
in the handling, and the profit is secure. We need not give figures to show 
the remunerative character of such a crop, a fact generally recognized by 
farmers everywhere, but it may be worth while to observe that there is a double 
profit to the grower, the seed being an excellent grain highly prized by stock- 
men. The new comer should inform himself of the possibilities of broom corn 
before deciding on any other crop. It is wise in him, after breaking the sod, 
to put in a seed that will yield a sure money return in a few months. Hi' may 
want also to sow an area of winter wheat. In May or June let him plant his 
broom corn, and it will be ready to harvest by September, with the ground 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



45 



in splendid condition for wheat. All through the months of early autumn 1 1 1 <_■ 
manufacturers and dealers are on the ground buying the crop, and there being 
brisk competition the producer never fails to gel a good round price for his 
corn. We ran conscientiously say thai Kansas outstrips all other states in 
this staple, since it grows one-third of the total product of the Union. The 
value of the crop for 1882, without taking account of the seed, which is worth 
from twenty-five to fifty cents a bushel, and yields from thirty to fifty bushels 
per acre, is estimated by the State Hoard of Agriculture at 12,552,259.78. 
McPherson county ranks first, and Pawnee, the center of the wool growing 
district, second in amount grown. Both these counties are within the A. T. 
& S. F. land errant limit. 




LOOKING SOL Til FROM MARIUX CENTRE. 



46 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 47 



fl yEAi^'s &5oi^. 



BREAKING prairie is an everyday sight in Kansas, bul our picture does 
poor justice to the scene. Could engraver reproduce on his block llie 
moist smell of the newly-turned earth, which the old eeclesiast declares 
"is wholesome to the body," or artist picture the dappled beauty of 

tlie growing crops alongside, thrusting their green blades up into the golden 
sunshine? Oh, the glories of a springtime cm these prairies! Neither paint 
nor pen can picture them — the clear air, the soft blue sky, the well defined 
horizon, the rolling billows of grass, the rare bloom of the early Sowers, and in 
the air the silent vet irrresistible murmur of growth, for the earth is glad that 
man has come to lift the burden of its idleness. There stands the white school- 
house in the sunlight, repeating over and over again the name of Kansas. It is 
alwavs a good time to come to Kansas, but the lust of all seasons are the spring 
and summer, fur it is then that nature clothes the land in her brightest robe, 
that all the world may see her. 

And here we will turn to more practical things. In the summer of L880, 
the Hon. .las. \V. Robinson, of Tremont, Illinois, broke the prairie sod on \~>'i 
acres of land in central Kansas. In the following September the sod was re- 
broken and sown to wheat, 1^ bushels to the acre. Soon after the wheat was 
sown Hon. John Fullinwider purchased the land, paying $1,600 lor ii, and 1456 
(x'-'i per acre) lor the work of breaking-, re-plowing, seed and sowing, making 
a total of $2,056 for land and crop. Mr. Fullinwider, when harvest came, 
gave Mr. A. I,. Wood one-third of the crop for harvesting and threshing, and for 
delivering his two-thirds in El Dorado. The yield was 4, '.'ill bushels — twenty- 
seven bushels to tin' acre. Mr. Fullinwider sold his two-thirds of the wheat for 
$3,220 in Kl Dorado. In other words, Mr. Fullinwider paid lor his land and all 
expenses of farming it, and netted $1,164, in a single year's operations. Mr. 
Wood sold his third of the wheat to Mr. Fullinwider for $1,600, and cleared in 
his little deal about $800. We could multiply instances if it were necessary, 
but this one, as the dashing Mercutio said of his wounds, will serve. 

There are thousands of urns of land In Kansas just as good as that which 
produced this wheat, and much of it can be had for a tithe of the poor lands of 

eastern states. When a purchase is made of the railroad, credit is given with 
seven per cent, interest. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



49 



pNOTHBI^ I^ESOUI^GE. 



7~\^S ESSRS. Prairie Dog' and Rattle Snake were the first farm-site 
\* I */ speculators in Kansas. Dusty little dog- and demure speckled owl, 
£2^L\2_ ' iav ' n g bought out the original firm, now carry on business at the 
old stand, where customers are treated with the same suspicion as 
heretofore. The rattlers always objected to the Santa Fe Railroad coming into 
the Arkansas Valley, and when the stockmen took possession of the buffalo 
range, they left out of sheer disgust — that is, such of them as could escape. 




v in ELY NEIGHBORHOOD. 



The fmr-footed population of the state is large and abundantly profitable. 
The Kansan, however, is a man of new resources. Although he has a yearly 
income of from 35 to 50 per cent, on his cattle ami sheep investments— enough, 
it would seem, to satisfy a reasonable desire — you could hardly guess the latest 
device for adding to his profits. A company called the "Wichita Prairie Dog 
Company" has been organized, the object and aim of which, as set forth in 



50 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 




ALOMi THE KANSAS RIVER. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



51 



its corporation papers, is "for tike procurement and ship nt of prairie dogs, 

in pairs or by the dozen, to eastern parties who may desire this delightful, cun- 
ing, and cleanly animal as a household or yard and garden pet." The price of 




illli. IN U. TOWS SITE SPECULATOR! 



young dogs will be merely nominal, while fully grown trained animals, with 
plated collars and ear tinklers, the company expect to express at $5 per pair. 
Gentlemen, the world moves in Kansas. 




AN AMERICAN "PATIENCE. 



m 



- 






■sea* 







Till-: KANSAS lHcTVUE BOOK. 



5:5 



Development. 




HE old order of things giveth place to the new with confusing rapidity 
in the West. A year is a long time in the history of a western state, 
and it is not safe to judge to-day by what was a year ago. We believe 
that the develop- 
ment of Kansas is un- 
matched anywhere. After 
the struggle for civil lib- 
erty the state leaped 
ahead, and with varying 
fortunes has ever since 
kept on the forward 
march; therefore it is dif- 
ficult to-day to write a 
record of its prosperity which will not be out of date twelve months hence, 
The census returns were taken in 1880. The full compilation has yet to 





nil YEARS FROM THE WILD BL i I kLO RANGE — SCHOOL-HOUSE AND FARMS. 

appear. So far as Kansas is concerned they can have but a relative and 

imperfect value. The new West grows while census enumerators slee] 

their task. Km- instance, instead 
of a corn product of 105, ,000 

bushels, which was the yield in 

1 880, the t rue figures, as supplied 
by the State Board oi Agriculture, 
at Topeka, should be 157,000,000. 

So in wheat there has I n a 

young but lusty. proportionate increase. 17,000,000. 




54 



Till: KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



bushels, notwithstanding it represented the aggregate crop of it recent year, 
must now be multiplied by two to indicate the 
latest returns. < >f oats. Kansas contributes 

22, , bushels, instead of 8,000,000, to the 

harvest. The sheep interest of the state has 
grown with the rest. The poor lame census 
bulletins — the very newest of them — are like- 
wise worthless on this industry, except as curi- 
osities. Sheen multiply in the Arkansas \ alley 
evi n as did the flocks of old, and the farmers get 
the increase thereof to the profitable advantage 
of from -i 11 to 60 per cent. The advance by 
importation and birth for some years past has been at the rate of Kin per 
cent, per annum. While such a progression is going on, the census figures 
remain at 400,000 head. Including this year's lamb crop, the number of 




UN! I VEARS FROM THE 
TREELESS PRAIRIE. 




EIGHTEEN MONTHS FROM TITE BUFFALO RANGE — AND HAPPY. 



these profitable animals in the slate now reaches 2,000,000. And so we are 
running away from our good friends in Washington. The sun may not move, 
Brother Jasper, of Richmond, notwithstanding, but it is certain all the world 
exeept the Census Bureau does, and that Kansas is keeping well to the front. 

One of the accompanying engravings shows 
the Axtel place, near Sterling. The second 
year's wdieat crop on this farm netted $10,- 
000. Another, entitled ''Three Years from 
the Treeless Prairie," shows the residence of 
the Rev. J. B. Schlichter, of the same place. 
"Eighteen Months from the Buffalo Range 
— and Happy," is a cut of the farm at (■. B 
the axtel lie i. Ketchum, near Kinsley, Edwards county. 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 55 



Redeeming jfhe "Desei^t." 



IRRIGATION is doing for Western Kansas precisely what it has done for 
every other region of the globe where it has been intelligently practiced. 
The world is too old, and the people know history too well, for an arg 
meiit to be granted on the subject of its benefits. Ancient and modern 
nations — Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, China, India, Italv, Spain, and a 
score more which you may read about in the encyclopaedia — have alike recog- 
nized them. In the valleys of Mexico and along the Rio Grande the plan of 
irrigating crops was in vogue long before the Spanish occupancy, and is still 
the only reliance for a yield of grain, fruit and vegetables. The fame of the 
ditches in California, Utah, and Colorado, is known round the world. The Mor- 
mons have done valuable service for the country in this one industry at least, 
the results accomplished in Salt Lake Valley having certainly been of signal 
importance to the western half of the continent. 

In Kansas the work is of later date, but it has passed beyond the stagi ol 
an experiment — for all efforts of this kind must be more or less experimental 
at first, under differing conditions of soil and climate. For years the far 
western counties of the state were turned over to the ranchmen to have and 
hold forever. Occasionally there were men who thought. Horace Greeley was 
one of these, and he prophesied, now long ago, that the time would come when 
the rich valleys and broad uplands of the Upper Arkansas would be turned into 
fields of splendid promise by the spade of the irrigator. Already it is difficult 
to write dispassionately of what has been achieved. Here- is a spot which 
until lately was looked upon as an impracticable waste, remote from any hope 
of agricultural or communal development, beyond the possibility of usefulness 
save as a grazing ground for cattle, a spot apparently slighted by nature and 
forgotten of man. Look ! how the unforeseen comes to pass. See, now, this 
same tract transformed into a garden spot, yielding crops remarkable even in a 
state the value of whose farm products in a single year touches $150,000,000. 
The western half of Kansas is a beautiful upland plateau, 200 miles long, and 
along the Arkansas Valley perhaps fifty more in width, averaging •■2,."><t0 feet in 
altitude, latitude corresponding to that of Virginia. In point ol' healthfulness 
of climate there is no region in the West to compare with it. and in fertility of 
soil none to excel it. The soil is a thoroughly decomposed rich clay loam, 
resting on a magnesian limestone formation, and containing in abundance the 
choicest elements of plant food, as witness the rich dark green of foliage of 
growing crops, and the hard white kernel of the grain harvested. This is the 



56 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



tract pierced by the irrigating' ditches, of which there are five now built, ex- 
tending main 7 miles and watering many thousand acres. The idle Arkansas is 
a peculiar stream. Its source is near the continental divide in Colorado, where 
snow lies the whole year, and as it starts from this birthplace and hastens south- 
ward, it leaves behind the primitive formation, and enters regions of more 
recent geological date, encountering a far more easily decomposed rock 
and a denser vegetation of forests and grasses, and consequently reaches the 
plains thoroughly charged with fertilizing materials, mainly inorganic in origin. 
Its water shed and tributaries can only be estimated by tens of thousands of 
square miles. The fall of the river in Kansas averages six and one-half feet to 
the mile, so that the work of taking water from it by ditches, and extending 
the ditches inland, is comparatively easy. The face of the country being smooth, 
and the slope toward the east continuous, the cost is not large. Owing to the 
heavy fall the water of the river is easily carried on to the uplands, thus bring- 
ing an immense area under moisture. 




WHO KILLED THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT: 

"I," SAID THE GRANGER, "WITH MY TEAM AND PLOW, 
I KILLED THE DESERT." 



Garden City and Lakin, in Finney countv, are the chief towns in the irriga- 
ble district. There are probably 50,000 acres of land in the vicinity of these 
places which can be bought for from *4 to $10 per acre. In a long and singu- 
larly able letter on the success of irrigation at Garden City, -Mr. O. Ellison has 
the following to say to intending home seekers : 

"Irrigation colonies afford many advantages over an ordinary farming- com- 
munity. Throughout Colorado and California it will be found that they have 
invariably attracted a highly intelligent class of settlers. As these communi- 
ties grow older they assume the aspect of a suburban town of a larger city. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



57 



Schools and churches are more easily maintained, become of a superior class, 
because this system of farming does away with large, half-tilled farms. Everj 
acre is made to yield its best; hence closer neighborhoods, increased social 
privileges, town libraries, etc. It is the only farming community in which the 
vexing problem of keeping the young men and women from a wholesale emi- 
gration to the cities is satisfactorily solved. Those who contemplate a move 
to the Ultima Thule of the extreme Northwest, I respectfully invite to a careful 
consideration of the claims of the Southwest before starting, whatever a skill- 
fully manipulated advertising bureau may say to the contrary. The Northwest 
is, and always will remain, the Russia and the Finland of this continent. It is 
swayed by an autocrat as despotic as any that ever ruled a farmer's home. 
Spring wheat is the beginning, and also the end of that country. Not a single 
resource besides this fleeting, isolated one. The Southwest is the Germany and 
France of our land. In its very heart tower the Rockies, affording us not only 




scenery equal to the Alps, but the raw material for an industrial empire such 
as the world never saw. The Southwest will compete with Great Britain in its 
coal and iron resources; it will outdo Australia and California in its production 
of precious metals; it will rival France in fruits and vineyards, and mulberry 
plantations; it will challenge the rich southeastern plains of Germany in its 
harvests of cereals and vegetables. While through its entire length penetrates 
a railway system — the A. T. & S. 1'". R. R. — already one of the world's great 
hi'i'hwavs, under a management so enlightened and liberal as to have carved out 
a front rank for itself among the greatest corporate organizations of the age, in 
the short period of ten years." 






'4£ 



~ < 



Til/: KANSAS PICTURE liuuK. 



59 



Followers op GQenno. 



'HE famous colony of German and Russian Mennonites have homes in 
South Central Kansas, where 'hey own and cultivate about 300,000 acres 
of land, the first purchase of which was made from the A. T. & S. F. 
R. R. eight years ago. Their farms would be a remarkable sight in any 
country; in a new state, where the land is prairie-level, and the methods of 
farming not over thorough, the sig'ht of their fields and orchards, their trim 
buildings hedged in with mulberry, is like a glimpse of some fair new land of 
promise. Neat as the Dutch, thrifty as the French, industrious as the Germans, 
this strange people, who will not g-o to war nor to law, are in some respects the 





A FAVORITE MF.NN'iMTE INDUSTRY. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



61 



most successful fanners in America. .Many of them began with nothing — all are 
well off now. When they came in 1875 they still retained the "little irreen 
flaring wagons" they had brought from Russia, and were attempting to live 
here under the same rule they followed in Russia. They built soil houses, and 
burnt straw in their ovens. I Jut t hey were neat and industrious, and, like the 
fabled husbandman who understood what the animals said and profited by the 
gift, they understood tin capabilities of Kansas soil and forthwith applied the 
knowledge. Before coining to Kansas, however, this practical people sent out 
a delegation of their foremost men to explore the United States for a suitable 
home. Various states competed for the new colony. It was known that the 
colonists, many of them, wore "sheepskin coats, ample breeches and bulbous 
petticoats," and were otherwise picturesquely attired, that they had views on 
questions of theology which seemed Quakerish and even stolid, and that, though 
hospitable to strangers, they were inclined to keep themselves aloof from a gun- 
tiring, oath-taking world ; but it was also realized that their frugality and thrift 
would soon make them a prosperous community, that they cultivated their fields 
with scrupulous thoroughness, and that in wheat growing they stood peerless. 
Alter extensive traveling and a thorough investigation of many localities, the 
advance few decided that the Arkansas Valley of Kansas was the place for their 
people : and they chose wisely. What more convincing testimony could be 
offered of the fertility and adaptability of Kansas soil than this decision, unless 
it lie the uniform success which has followed it? There are other bands of Men- 
nonites in the United States as hard working, as frugal as these, but the Kan- 
sas colonies — for there are several now — have outstripped them all. The 
inference is plain. 







GERM IN 1 HR1FT. 



THE KANSAS PH TVRE BOOK. 63 



pN Illinois Rai^mei^. 



IX miles from Newton, iii Harvey county. South Central Kansas, is situ- 
ated the 680 acre farm of Mr. A. II. McLain, formerly of I! I county, 

Illinois. Mr. .McLain came to Kansas in 1872, and bought land of the 
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company. He had very 

little capital except a clear head and stout heart, but these have paid him s I 

dividends. Mr. Curtis, of the Chicago Tnti r Ocean, while in Kansas last spring, 
visited this farm and wrote the following: 

'•As you approach tin- place, you see several acres of Cottonwood trees, 
planted very thickly, which are intended as a protection from the wind for the 
cattle, and Mr. McLain says it is the lust shelter tiny could possibly have. He 
has wintered something over a hundred head in that way, feeding them sorghum 
cane or corn fodder upon the ground. 

"The house is surrounded with fruit trees and berry bushes, all famous for 
their yield, and the entire farm is hedged with Osage orange. 

"I ashed Mr. McLain why Kansas was a Letter state for farming than Illinois, 
and he replied by giving several reasons. 

"In the first place,' he said, 'the jlimate is perfectly adapted to the cultiva- 
tion of winter wheat — as much so as Southern Illinois, hence we can get in the 
biggest part of our crops in the fall, and have the entire spring for corn. We 
are thus able to cultivate at least a third more ground than in Northern Illinois 
or Iowa, tor example. In addition to this, the winters are so much shorter that 
we can begin earlier ill the spring and work later in the fall. We do most of 
our plowing in March. Here it is the latter end of March and my spring plow- 
in- is almost done. Then again, the ground cultivates easier than any I have 
eve,- seen. You can run a 14-inch plow here as easily as you can a 12-inch plow 
in the Eastern States. We never have excessive hot weather here during tin; 
summer months, and the nights are always cool, so the same amount of labor is 
less exhausting, and the same amount of rest is more gratifying than in other 

climates.'' 

'" Bat,' continued Mr. McLain, 'one of the chief advantages of Kansas is 

the price of the land. You cannot get as good a farm as mine in Illinois for 
less than *;."> an acre, and it only cost me $6. Your money will go ten times 
as far. and you can get land as good as the best.' 

"'But is there other land here as g 1 as yours?' 

•'•.lust exactly. Of course the land in this neighborhood is all taken up, 
hut there is plenty of it in the county just as good as mine, that can be bought 
of tin' Santa Fe Kail road Company upon the same terms that 1 got mine.' 



64 THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 

"'Did the railroad company treat you well*? Wen- they fair?' 

••'I want to say right here that the company offered me inducements and 
good terms to locate here, and they did exactly as they Agreed to do. I know 
that it is tli'- general opinion that corporations have no souls, and that railroad 
men are organized to swindle the farmers. They had a splendid chance to 
swindle me if they wanted to, but they gave me a fair, square show. I bought 
my land on time, and they had plenty of chances to crush and gouge me if 
i bey had wanted to.' 

"Mr. MoLain showed us about his place, and pointed with pride to the im- 
provements he has made. He had a large herd of fat calves grazing upon a 
field of winter wheat that looked as fresh and green as the sward of a lawn, 
and 1 asked him if he was not afraid they would pull it up, or injure the crop? 

'"Oh no,' he said, 'I always pasture my calves on the wheat. It is good for 
the calves and good for the wheat. Last year was a poor year for wheat, but 1 
wintered lot; calves on 100 acres of wheat, and then harvested 1,500 bushels 
from it. You see it didn't injure it much.' 

"I asked .Mr. McLain about profits. He said that the biggest profits were 
in cattle and sheep, but in mixed farming they were much larger than in the 
Eastern states. Of course it all depended upon good management, as in every 
other sort of business, but he knew of no place where the farmer realized so 
much upon his investment, whether in grain or corn, or hogs, or cattle, or sheep, 
or poultry, or fruit, as he did in Kansas. Hay costs nothing-, beef is cheap, 
the market is convenient, and the demand is always good. The greatest demand 
now was for vegetables and fruits for the mining camps. The .Santa Fe Rail- 
road gave them direct connection and low freights to the points of supply, and 
there was no end to the market for poultry, eggs, butter, fruit, vegetables, oats, 
pressed hay, and everything possible that could be raised in or off the ground. 
His fruit, trees commenced to bear two years ago, and he has already sold 
$1,200 worth of fruit from them. 

"As to the climate and healthfulness, Mr. McLain thought Kansas could 
not be surpassed. He couldn't remember when they had a doctor at his house, 
except once about three years ago when one of the boys dislocated his arm." 

It would be interesting to reproduce the correspondent's account of the 
dinner he afterward begged at a Tuscan-red farm house, where "an uncom- 
monly prettv young lady, in a blue gingham dress and pink cheeks, who was 
much given to blushing and drooping her eyelids in a distracting sort of way," 
ministered to his famished needs— a bride she proved to be, the more's the 
pity — but this story, together with a complete and entertaining record of Mr. 
Curtis's experience in Kansas, may be obtained free on application to A. S, 
Johnson, Topeka, Kansas. Designate the Inter <><nt>i letters in writing. 



77/ A' KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



65 



OUI^ FJlYBI^S. 



COMMENCING at the Missouri River on the east, and ribboning the 
luxuriant pastures and wheat-goldened acres of Kansas, a numerous 
and generally silent family of creeks and rivers. The -Missouri itseli 
is navigable almost the entire year by the largest steamboats, and the 
.small part of it forming a share of the eastern boundary of the stale is 
spanned by at least four substantial iron bridges. The Republican, rising in 
Colorado, crosses into Nebraska, and after draining the border counties reen- 
ters Kansas, which it lias already watered for a shorl distance in its course, 
unites with the Smoky Hill, and forms the broad, shallow, yellow, famous Kaw, 
or Kansas, which pursues an easterly course to the Missouri River. Though it is 
not now navigable, small steamboats plied on the river in former days as far west 
as Fort Riley. The broader, shallower, yellower and more famous Arkansas, 




\i BOSS Till. VRK W- is RIVER \ 



after gathering volume from thr melting snows of the Rockj Mountains, 
and tumbling through that mighty canon which no man ever looked upon 
except in awe, also enters the state from Colorado, flows gentlj southward for 
more than L20 miles, then to the northwest for nearly ;."> miles to Great Bend, 
and then to the southeast Cor 150 miles, through the best winter-wheat 
region of tin- state, and what we honestlj believe to he the best farming 
country in the West, to its crossing into the Indian Territory on its wa\ 
to the Mississippi. Along the happy valley of this stream stretch lor many 
miles, from horizon to horizon, tic thin, bright lines of steel over which passes 

and repasses the traffic of the A. T. & S. F. Railroad, the modern usurper of 
tie- i )ld Trail. And of all tie- splendid country through which the hissing 



60 



THE KANSAS PlvTl'ItE BOOK. 



engine rushes, one half, for a stipulated distance on either side, was granted by- 
Art of ('(ingress to the company which discovered this new garden spot to the 
world. The Cimarron, in the heart of the cattle country, and a multitude of 
minor feeders of the Arkansas River, drain all the southern counties west and 
east of this main stream, which receives at last, out of Southeastern Kansas, 
the fair Neosho, of which the Cottonwood is a tributary. Other important 
streams are the Blue, Solomon, Marais du Cygne, and Nemaha, while the 
creeks are too many to count. Nearly all the rivers have excellent water 
power. 




SUGAR MILL AT STERLING. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 67 



Sorghum. 




'HOUGH a new crop, sorghum is already a staple product of Kansas, 
where it is raised over a wider area than in any other state of the 
Union. The Arkansas River Valley is the chief field for the crop. Its 
sugar and syrup mills are valued at half a million dollars. The soil and 
the warm dry climate, adapted to the certain production of the highest grade 
of amber cane, have been found to surpass all others for the growth of sor- 
ghum. They assure a plant of better quality, that ripens sooner, and makes 
a surer crop, than experiment has produced in any other locality. The work- 
ing season is just double that of any northern state, and this, with tie 
that no fuel except waste bagasse is needed for manufacturing, is an advan- 
tage which only Kansas holds out to the industry. Sugar-making -is no 
longer an experiment in the Arkansas Valley, and the mills have been making 
syrup tor two years. The Kansas Sugar and Syrup Company, at Sterling, Rice 
county, whose works are shown in the engraving, has lately sold out to a syndi- 
cate of eastern capitalists, most of whom are also interested in the sugar works 
at Champaign, 111. The new company will adapt the work to the manufacture 
of sugar from sorghum syrup according to the Champaign method, in which 
they will invest $250,000 in the original plant and auxiliary work, making tie- 
Sterling works the main plant for their out-put in Kansas. 

The value of the sorghum plant for feeding, however, gives a new wealth to 
Kansas. An acre of it is everywhere worth an acre of corn. There is no dis- 
pute about that; the only question with the stockmen is, how much more it is 
worth. "1 agree with all that has been said in reference to the value of sor- 
ghum for a forage plant."' writes a Sterling farmer, "only I claim that one 
acre i^ equal to two of any other crop 1 can raise in Kansas. I raised ', \ 
acres in 1881 and llu acres in 1882, and saved feed both years, and nothing 1 
ever fed will lay on fat so quick, and nothing is relished by stock so well. My 
horses and mules will not eat any corn when there is sorghum in the manger." 
To obtain the best results, the seed ami fodder should be fed together. The 
cane will keep green all winter in large shocks, or in stack or rick. If to be 
stacked, it should be planted late, so as not to be ready to cut before the 
weather is cool, whereby all danger of heating or souring is avoided. It should 
also be allowed to partially cure before stacking. A good plan is to shock in 
th<- field and then stack late. The Kansas sheep men prefer sorghum for fat- 
tening purposes to any other crop. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



r.9 



}{ING (©OI^N. 




GROWN l'.V AN" ENTHUSIAST. 



eORN grows tall in Kansas. \<-v\ tall indeed, and the homes sometimes 
grow short — a preliminary statement which will explain an apparent 
vagary in the lirst of our artist's sketches. Possibly you arc skeptical, 
and would like a few facts. A glance at the picture shows two men 
discussing the probable yield of the crop. One of them, who is the artist (you 
can tell that by his fashionable coat), 
has just measured tin' tallest stalks 
in the field and finds them to be be- 
tween fifteen and sixteen feet high. 
These he afterward had cut for exhi- 
bition, and they may be seen in the 
superb display of Kansas products 
collected 1>\ the Atchison, Topeka 
& Santa Fe Railroad, in the Industrial 
Annex to the Agricultural Depart- 
ment, at Washington. How much 
corn like this do they grow in Kan- 
sas? A question hard to answer, 
but in 1882 the state had 4,441,836 acres under the crop, yielding a 
little less than 1 (in, (it mi, in it i bushels. This product ranks Kansas as one of 
the four great corn states in the Union. The average yield was thirty-live 
bushels per aire. We are told that corn is King, and it is. Lei us crown 
the Kansas farmer, then, until some other can show a better average. Nine 

counties in the state had 



1.00,000 acres or there- 
abouts in corn. < >ur fig- 
ures are from the official 
repi ir1 bj I he State Board 
of Agriculture. A crop of 
this kind makes fat hogs 
and fat cattle, fat purses 
CORN BOTTOMS. ,,„,_ .,,,,) t ) K . s( . ;,,-,. things 

which gladden the; farmer's heart. The clean corn bottoms of the Arkansas 
River are sights worth traveling far to see. The fanners are industrious and 
intelligent, and clean out the weedy patches, but there is a natural cause 
working to the cultivator's advantage. In the lowlands of the fertile bottoms 




70 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



of the South, and of Missouri and Illinois, work in the cornfield, in a broiling 



The air is sultry and debilitating. 



summer sun, is irksome and exhaustin 
But on the high prairies of Kansas, 
1,000 to 2,000 feet above sea level, 
labor is not a burden but a pleasure. 
The farmer could not lie lazily down 
during tin. best part of the day, as his 
brother in some states is apt to do, sap- 
posing even he had the inclination. The 
result of his industry is a foregone con- 
clusion. 

I in- flood of emigration surges west- 
ward. The possibility of obtaining laud 
as a gift lures multitudes to distant 
parts, but when the average is made 
up, the densest mass of population is 
found in the corn belt. No man who 
wants a snug farm of his own will 
venture out of it. Especially should 
those in moderate circumstances keep 
in the right latitude. Indian corn is 
the grain above all others for the per- 
manent growth and enrichment of a 
country, and when- it grows the great- 
est range of production exists. Cattle, 
horses, sheep and swine keep fat; the 
climate is best adapted for I. utter and 
cheese; the zone is the fruit-bearing 
zone; it is the golden mean between 
hot and cold; it presents more varied 
calls for employment; it combines the 
largesf proportion of desirable things. 
The flood surges westward along the 
favored parallel. In tin- trans-Missouri 
region the choicest lands will soon be 
taken, a,id then the filling-in process 
"ill begin. Happy is the man who 
delays not to secure a home while it 
can be had cheap Kansas says, « W. Wait yet a little while, and the echo 
will sound hack, Return, we are full. 




SO LARGE AS POME. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



71 



fl UAnrni^Aii I^ESEI^YOII^. 

IT is not enough that a land flow with milk and honey if it lack water. A 
happy provision of nature has secured to the Arkansas Valley an inex- 
haustible supply. There appears to be a vast aqueous reservoir underlying 
the entile country, perhaps a bed of quicksand, conducting the waters of 
the river far inland in all directions. Strike this, and wells never fail; erect a 
wind-null and let it work incessantly, you cannot pump it dry. The Arkansas 
River was never known to overflow its banks — it underflows instead, and so dis- 
poses of the surplus in times of heavy rains. When the river rises there is a 
corresponding rise in the wells, and nice !>< rsa. The Arkansas starts amid the 
perpetual snows of the Rocky Mountains — an exhaustless fountain — and no man 
in Southwest Kansas need lack for pure water, either for himself or his stock, who 
has industry enough to sink a well. A never failing supply is reached at a 
depth varying from 20 to 40 feet. 




F)OGS. 

1 HE rank of second among pork-packing points in the West is freclv con- 
ceded to Kansas City, which, though geographically in Missouri, is really 
the mercantile center of the state whose name it bears. The packing- 
last year, in face of a shortage in the crop, reached 750,001) head. In 
twelve years the number of hogs assessed in Kansas has risen from 206,000 t<> 
l.\ , '.'S,(M)0 head, with a proportionate advance in quality. Of this large number, 
valued at $12,286,830, all not consumed at home are marketed and largely packed 
in Kansas City. Statistics show that 
hogs parked there yield more lard in 
proportion to gross weight than any 
others packed in America. No people 
have been more energetic and liberal in 
procuring the best breeding stock than 
Kansans. Probably four-fifths of the 
animals now in the hands of the farmers 
are Poland-Chinas or Berkshires, or 
their crosses. We never hear of any disease among Kansas hogs, and with its 
other advantages the corn-producing capacity of the state renders it a pecu- 
liarly well adapted field for this branch of stock-raising. 




IVLANH-UIIXA. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 73 



fl fflODEL I^ANGH. 



S f I M < » \ ( i the first things a man does after coming to Kansas to embark 
I— in slier]* raising, is to visit Pawnee county and call on Mr. (>. II. 

f ) *__ __ Wadsworth, who came to Lamed to engage in sheep husbandry before 
tin' long tract of country extending from Great Bend west to tin mountains 
was so thickly peopled with herdsmen as it is to-day. 'Tin- I'm.- grasses, pure 
water, well drained soil, and dry atmosphere, perfectly suited to wool grow- 
ing, uric there years before liis coming, but not so man) had been and seen as 

have come since. A g 1 deal of land was running to waste eight years ago 

that now supports fat herds. Mr. Wadsworth has been adding to his purse 
every year since he came to Kansas, ami his experience is only that of mint, 
nine out of a hundred of tin- men who have gone into sheep with anything like 
an adequate idea of the work t<> start with. 

What we all rare for in these things is hard experience. Elsewhere the 
reader will find fuller reference to the country about Lamed; we will touch 

here on what Mr. Wadsworth has accomplished. lie moved to Kansas in 1875, 
located his present homestead eleven miles south of Larned, built a soil house, 
Stable, etc., and put 2,000 sheep on the range. Next he built a house fur his 
family, put up needful slie.ls. ami bought 480 acres of land from the railroad. 
A well was sunk at the corral, which at thirty feet touched a water supply 
sufficient for 1.0,000 sheep, and a windmill was erected to do the pumping. 

That well and windmill are still at work. From such a beginning Mr. Wads- 
worth made his start; now he has more sheep, or at least he has had in the 
last few years, than any other wool grower in the county. In 1882 lie 
owned, wholly or in part. 28,000 head, ami this year he holds 8,000 of his own, 
and is interested in many thousand more. 

During the lirst three years of his experience Mr. Wadsworth kept an 
account bv strict business methods of his income and expenditures. lie found 
that the net profits on his original investment of S4,!t48 were $7,420, taking 
no account of a Hock of sheep graded from the original herd and worth $6,600 
in addition. Having already engaged in the sheep business in Iowa and 
Missouri before coming further west, what he has to say about Southwestern 
Kansas is worth reading. "] think this country far preferable," he writes, 
"to any other I know of for the wool business. I am confident that any one 

can come here with sheep, managing them as he should do, ami realize fifty 
per cent, a year on the investment. There is no trouble whatever with foot-rot 
and the various diseases thai in most localities make the business hazardous." 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 75 

The only disease to which Kansas sheep are subject is "scab," they being ex- 
posed to that by the steady and heavy importation of herds from Colorado 
and Missouri into the state, but it is destructive only in cases of carelessness, 
as dipping twice in a mixture of sulphur and tobacco, or lime and sulphur, 
assures a cure. 

There are twenty other sheep farms in the neighborhood of Larned where 
as much could be seen and learned as at Mr. Wadsworth's. His has been 
singled out for illustration, because it is a place visited by everybody who has 
" si p in his eye." 



CQlLBS OP Gl^EBN E?ASTUI^E. 




'HE growing importance of grass land in Kansas is unmistakable. There 
are many farmers in the western counties who would gladly exchange 
their broken ground for the original prairie sod, if they could. The 
abundance, luxuriance and sterling staying qualities of Kansas grasses 
have given them a genuine marketable value which no caprice of climate can alter. 
The buffalo variety is undoubtedly the finest winter grass in the world, and 
while it grows over a large area of western country, in no other place does 
the quantity per acre equal that of Kansas. The blue stem is a plentiful and 
nutritious summer grass. The farmers are paving more attention to the culti- 
vation of tame grasses than hitherto, but in the southwestern counties the 
abundance and quality of prairie meadow and pasture are such as to remove all 
desire on the part of the husbandman to supersede them. A great body of 
Kansas soil has been made by the disintegration of limestone rock, and when- 
ever such is the case Kentucky blue grass thrives even as under its native sky 
But the farmer, however anxious he may be before starting out in respect to 
the possibilities of Southwest Kansas as a blue-grass country, will find, on look- 
ing into the matter, that blue grass is inferior to orchard grass, meadow oat 
grass, clover and alfalfa, for the prairie. In the eastern counties the circum- 
stances are different, but in the West this much talked about pasturage is 
almost valueless in general fanning, giving but scant feed during a limited por- 
tion of the vear. A mixture of one and one-half bushels of orchard grass seed 
and two or three quarts of clover seed to the acre of ground will give a stand 
of grass that should satisfy the most exacting. These varieties find no more 
congenial climate anywhere, and with the others mentioned make big yields. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



77 



(sITIES OP THE SOUTHWEST. 




HE numbei and general prosperity of the towns of South Central and 

Southwest Kansas are a strange sight to one who crossed the plains ten 
years or more ago, and remembers the eternal sameness of things during 
the weary months when the "train" moved through that desolate it' 
lovely wilderness. 

The Arkansas Valley in those years "as solitary beyond the powers of 
description. The river obeyed the tortuous windings of its treeless banks with 
a placidness that was awful in its silence, and wdio followed its meanderings 
with no companion save his own thoughts, says Colonel Inman, to whom we arc 
indebted for this description, realized in all its intensity the meaning of the 
word Alone. Illimitable as the ocean, the monotonous waste stretched away 
until lost in the blue of the sky. The mirage created fantastic landscapes and 
pictured distanci s thai only deceived and annoyed. The shriek of the bittern 




- 

Till: ARKANSAS VAUCEY AT GREAT BEND. 

rarely broke upon the air to disturb the quiet of those silent waters, or the 
sharp whir-r of the startled pheasant to grate harshly on the ear: the hare 
rushed trembling from man's presence, but had no voice to express her alarm; 
the antelope and buffalo moved quickly away at his coming, but uttered no 
sound i" change the brooding quiet. Vet, despite its loneliness, the picture af 
times was beautiful, for there were miles <>f prairie which seemed to have risen 
like islands out of the sea. These were 

* * * the gardens of the desert, these 
The unshorn fields, bonndless and beautiful, 
Ami fresh as the pouns earth ere man had - 

Lo! thi | -i 
In airy undulations fai i 

\- II thi an In hi well 

81 1 still, with all his rounded billows fixed 

And motionless forever. 



78 



THE KANSAS PICTURE Booh'. 



And now that memorable silence is broken by the hum of the reaper and 
the sound of traffic. Sleek cattle roam over what was once a waste, sheep 
fatten thereon by thousands, and the whole region is instinct with life and 
human enersrv. The locomotive has cheated Solitude out of its valley. 

Leaving Kansas City and passing Lawrence, or starting from Atchison, the 
traveler arrives with good speed at Topeka, the capital of the state and one of 
the most active and prosperous cities in the West. Thence southward and to 
the west through the coal region of Osage county, he passes the important 
town of Emporia, and thirteen miles beyond enters the Land Grant of the 
Atchison, Topeka and Santa I'Y Railroad, as splendid a tract of land as the 
National Government ever granted a corporation. Strong City, the first prin- 
cipal station, quarries large quantities of superior limestone, which it ships to all 
parts of the state. The Capitol at Topeka is built of this stone. Cottonwood 
Falls, the countv seat, is a mile and a half distant. The surrounding country is 

well suited to agricultural 
and stock purposes. Then 
comes Florence in Marion 
county, with 1,000 or 1,200 
people, the center of a 
famous farming district. 
Grain and live stock are 
the chief shipments. Two 
churches, several religious 
societies, and a good graded 
school are supported. Flor- 
ence has two hotels, one 
newspaper, a gristmill, an 
elevator, three quarries, a 
lime kiln, and other evi- 
dences of business life. 

Between Florence and 
Great Bend is a country 
of remarkable resources, 
unexcelled in Kansas. Nearly every acre is tillable. It is doubtful if another 
body of land equaling this in extent, with so small a percentage of waste, can 
be found in the West. 

Newton, the county seat of Harvey county, has a growing population now 
numbering 3,500. The railroad station cost $30,000, and the new county 
jail one third that sum. Besides four churches and two fine school houses, 
the city sustains five hotels, four banks, three newspapers, three elevators, 
and shows unmistakable signs of "push." 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



79 



Thirty-three miles further wesl the road strikes the Arkansas River at 

Hutchinson, which stream it follows for over 250 miles to the western line of 
the state. Hutchinson is in Reno county, and has a shipping prominence 
that is remarkable for a place of 2,500 people. It contains four churches, a fine 
graded school, three newspapers, two banks, a brick court house, an elaborately 
equipped sugar refinery, a creamery, grist mills, hotels, an opera house, etc. 
A large quantity of railroad land is for sale in Reno count \ at from $4 to 18 
per acre. Nickerson and Sterling come next, and then Raymond and Ellin- 
wood, near all of which the stockmen can find good, low juiced land. 

Nickerson was laid out in October, 1879, but its growth has been accelerated 
by the location there of important railroad division headquarters. It is also the 
principal shipping point east of Dodge City for cattle from Indian Territory 
and the south. Sterling has 
'.'.i 100 inhabitants, two of the 
largest sug"ar and syrup mills 
in the Arkansas Valley, and 
plenty of churches, schools, 
and enterprise. Raymond 
is a newer station just start- 
ing into life, with the rural 
church, hotel, and good Kan- 
sas school ; ships hay, live 
stock, broom corn and prod- 
uce. Ellinwood stands at 
the junction of the main 
line and the McPherson 
branch of the Atchison, 
Topeka and Santa Fe, and 
reports a population of 700, 
largely German, who have 
a Catholic and Lutheran 
church, a public school, sev- 
eral hotels, one brewerv, 

and a flouring mill. This little town shipped 463 carloads of wheat in the last 
six months of last year, in addition to what was ground up at home, and one- 
third of the crop which the farmers held. Great Bend is a few miles further 
on. Between that city and Dodge lies a stretch of country one hundred miles 
long, perfectly healthful, subject to little cold weather and less snow, and better 
adapted to cattle and sheep than any other area over which the writer ever 
traveled. The surface is rolling, the soil well drained, the range from horizon 
to horizon. The grass, instead of the blue stem and other summer varieties of 




BUT! HINSON OPER l- HOUSE. 



80 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



the eastern counties, is that king of all pasture, the buffalo, rich in saccharine 
matter and succulent fiber, sought out by animals in summer and winter. The 
average elevation above the sea is at least '.'.<" M) feet, and to breathe the 
quickening air of these plains is to insure the body against the ills of ague, 
asthma, and consumption. And west of Dodge City there is equally good 
grazing-. The characteristic features of Dodge itself (as the great cattle town 
is familiarly called) are touched upon in other pages of this book, but mention 
may here be made of its §10,000 court house, imposing brick school house, 
said to be unexcelled in the state, its church, banks, mill, tannery, and two 
bright newspapers. Originally a point from which buffalo hunters drew their 
supplies, Dodge has grown to become a county seat boasting 1 ,'-2o(J people, with 
a cattle trade involving millions of dollars. Still onward, and Garden City, a 
new Metropolis is reached, and the irrigating ditches already seen at inter- 
vals from the car window have increased until there seems no limit to them. 
No greater success has been achieved in Kansas agriculture than farming by 
irrigation; there is hardly a record of individual failure, even, and the crops 
raised along the ditches would astonish the best market gardener in the world. 
Canals now built will water 300,000 acres. I.akin also has irrigating ditches. 

Coolidge is the last town before 

J^P g * S3 ^ _ [~^ 455S ^WiJl:^i^ ''"' r:,ilr '" i " 1 rr " sses i " t " Col ~ 

orado. 

There is no difference of 
opinion among intelligent men 
as to the fertility of Kansas 
soil, but while agriculture has 
been pursued with degrees of 
success varying as the farmer's 
grasp of the needs and re- 
sources of his particular section 
varied — albeit with an aggre- 
gate result unsurpassed in the 
annals of farming — the stock- 
men have always and every- 
where made money, and to the growing stock interests we look for the future 
wealth of the state. Farming will continue to advance, but great as its 
rewards are, it cannot hope to overtake the greater increase on the range The 
more corn raised, the better for cattle, sheep, and hogs, and the more of these 
animals the better for the farmers and the state. The amazing increase in the 
number of live stock is therefore the happiest omen for the future. As there 
is land enough to dispel all fear of overcrowding, we can utter no wiser counsel, 
if you have your mind se1 on :i ranch, than "Come on." 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



si 



"<fc)A1"PLB OP jphe Day. 



C\ 1 ft HILST it. is a marvel to find such school houses and so many of them, 

/. \ such churches and so hands les, the number and meril of Kan- 

(1^ S as newspapers afford a similar surprise. Mr. George I'. Rowell, of 
Now York city, being asked which state showed the most rapid 
increase in newspapers, said: "Kansas leads the list by long odd-. Its 
newspapers have increased in number in excess of those of any other state in 
the Union. Two years ago, when my newspaper directorywas ou1 of the print- 




er's hands, 1 congratulated its editor, Mr. Wattemburg, upon the general accu- 
racy with which the statistics had been compiled. ' I am sorry to say,' he said, 
after having smilingly taken in my remark, 'that the collection is nol as accu- 
rate as you think. I have here in my pockel the names of eighty-three news- 
papers that were started in Kansas while the directory was in press.'" 

The culture and general intelligence of New England is a boast of long 
Standing. The newspapers may 1»' taken as a fair indication in this matter. 

Vet Main.-, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island — four out of tie- 
six states, including a population of 1,700,000 people, as against 1,000, 

Kansas— do not have as many papers as does the twenty-one-year-old state 
standing at the gateway of the Far West. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 83 



Gnglishmbn in Kansas. 




'HE Makins are young Englishmen who emigrated from Liverpool to 

America in search of the best locality for stock-raising. They found 
thai spot, they think, three miles south of Florence, in Marion 
county, Kansas. Buying land of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe Railroad Company, they at once set to work putting up buildings and stock- 
ing a farm, expending- altogether about $'25,000. This was three years ago. 
Now their splendid farm, stocked with high-bred cattle, together with its com- 
fortable improvements, is worth £40,000 at least. Readers with a turn for 
figures can work out the profit on this investment. Mr. Willoughby Makin, who 
is an active member of the British Club of Kansas, refers to this southwestern 
country as "the stockman's paradise." There is not a more ag'reeable place in 
the state to visit than the Makin ranch, and the boys will forgive us for advising 
anyone who is about to engage in stock-raising to get an opinion from them as 
to a stock investment in Southwest Kansas. 



nAmUl^AIi I^OADS. 



IT is the universal opinion among farmers who come to the Arkansas Valley 
from Indiana, Illinois and other states, that Kansas has ••the besl roads in the 
world." Making due allowance for all exaggeration, it is still true that 
the common highways of the state are better than those of other western 
states, from which a great many settlers have immigrated to the newer \\ es< 
beyond. Some of the local papers lately printed interviews with leading 
farmers of their districts, and in almost every instance the roads were hit 
upon for favorable comparison. The rolling face of the country insures good 
drainage; there are no swamps, and none of those terrors of most flat countries 
— sloughs. The character of the soil is such that the track becomes very solid 
and smooth by travel, presenting a surface almost as hard as wood. A little 
care keeps the roads as they should be the year round. When you come to 
Kansas it will interest you to notice these splendid natural highways, running 
in all directions across the prairie and forming an attractive feature about 
which little has ever been said in print. 







j 



;»?; , -*17| 



TEE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 85 



fl CQbssagb fi^om the Hoi^h. 



IF you will open the map of Kansas and trace the course which the tide of 
western immigration has followed, you will find that the firsl poinl where 
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad really touches the Arkansas River 

is at 1 [utchinson, tin unty scat of Reno county, and the center of a wide 

and prosperous district. For general farming and stuck raising no liner trad of 
land exists in the West. At the last state fair, Reno county was awarded 
firsl honors, again proving how little dream and how much truth there is in all 
that has been written about the beautiful valley of the Arkansas. 

And while bright and winsome Hutchinson — to our prejudice the most 
interesting and go-ahead town in the Southwest — is the rallying point of as 
fertile an agricultural tract as the sun shines on, it is also becoming a stock 
center of more than ordinary importance, for the neighboring countrj affords 
many acres of buffalo grass and blue stem range. The general tendency 
among stockmen to discard the more expensive and unsatisfactory scheme 
of herding for a fenced pasture, is evident all over this county. But 
besides being a good place for the tiller and the herdsman, the appended 
letter would tend to show that Reno is a good county to live in, leastwise 
that it is not a good county to emigrate from. There may be some who 
cherish a longing for the far frigid northland. Here is a man who went to 
Dakota territory from Kansas, and seems to have made a pretty accurate 
estimate of his new home. The recipient of his letter is Mr. A. II. Moll, t, ol 
Hutchinson, and the communication, dated Mavville, D. T., runs as follows: 

Friexd Mofket: We have been excluded from the outside world by snow 
for more than four weeks, and as they had to abandon the trains forty-seven 
miles south of this place last week, the prospects are that we will have to live 
in exile another long month. I am realizing the' fact that I am a good ways 
from home, out in the snow, without one love near. We shall soon lie in a ter- 
rible condition for fuel and food. We had a blizzard last week that for magni- 
tude lavs over anything in that line I ever dreamt of. Any and all former eff< >rts 
in that line have paled into insignificance. 1 am entirely outdone in this last 
hook. We have been shut out from the world so long that I am unable to tell 
whether to wear spring or winter clothes. Still interspersed between the moan- 
ing of th<> wind you will occasionally hear some old weather-broken cuss saj 
that he has been out in some trapping time "in wuss storms than this — when 
you could not see ten loot ahead." We have now on hand snow I >:i nks in our 
streets more than fifteen feet high. Navigation is entirely closed, with the 
5 



86 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



exception of now and then a Laplander, who comes in on top of the crust on a 
pair of snow shoes. And still they think we ought to, or should be amiable 
enough to love this country. 

Should I not come out in the spring I want you to have my remains 
exhumed and shipped to Kansas and interred. You will find my bank account 
in the left-hand drawer in my desk. I think it will be large enough to defray 
all expenses. * * * 

I am, yours truly, Ted. Haxverson. 




" x>.^s35S^^*Mp 






AT ANCHOR. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



s7 



Spoilt on the ©i^aipje. 




'HERE is royal sport to be had on the plains of Western Kansas. Prairie 
chicken are plentiful, and there is no finer bird in the world for the 
huntsman. Quail dodge out of every hedge-row. the open fields are 
alive with them, and they scamper along under your very horse's head, 
or whistle to their mates "in the standing corn," as you drive by. Great 
bevies of grouse feed in the grain and stubble fields. The snipe and curlew 
are easily shot, and so is the wild pigeon. During the spring and fall 
millions of plover visit the state, remaining with us long enough for sports- 
men to capture good bags. Wild ducks and geese fairly swarm about the 
Arkansas River and its tributaries, and in many instances the farmers resort to 




L(>! THE POOR BUFFALO. 



scare-crows — or shall we call the effigies scare-geese? — to prevent the destruction 
of their wheat and corn. The Mennonites, who do not believe in the use oi 
fire-arms, send their children into the wheat-fields to frighten away the birds. 
On a November evening in 1SSI the writer witnessed an incident near Burrton, 
in Harvey county, which will illustrate the abundanceof this game. The son of 
the hotel-keeper took his father's gun and started for a neighboring corn-field 
where the geese had been swarming all day. Being a youngster and anxious 
not to return empty-handed, he crept along on his hands and knees close up to 
the flock. Leveling his weapon he fired, but the cap did not explode, and the 
birds took to tlight upon hearing the click of the hammer. The gun was a 
double-barreled one, and as soon as he could the boy took aim and fired 
again, whereupon thirteen geese fell, which he brought in triumph to the 



88 



THE KANSAS P1CTVRE BOOK. 



hotel. The market price of the birds last year in towns west of Newton was 
ten nnts apiece, or about what the feathers were worth. But there is larger 
game to lie attended to. Though rapidly disappearing before the encroaching 
march of the homesteader, the buffalo still pastures in some parts of Western 
Kansas, and occasionally, says Mr. Porter in "The West," "a herd of wild 
horses dashes into the southwestern counties." Antelope and deer bound 
along the picturesque bluffs, and hide in the tall grass and woody selvedges of 
I lie bottom lands, and there certainly is no finer sport in all the chase than 
racing the fleet antelope. None, unless it be coursing - the bounding jack-rab- 
bit as he flies ahead of the hounds. These " varmints" exist in thousands on 
the prairies, and a dozen other diverting small fry of the four-legged order 
afford opportunities to the Nimrod. 




AFTER I lit INT] LOPE. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 89 



p Special E?lea 



•" t ENTLEMEN of the jury: He is an outcast, it is true, but he is also the 
I -_—■•' oldest inhabitant." He is a thief, but he has been evicted from his 
V J stamping ground. He may have purloined your boots or your saddle- 
straps, but since "he is disowned by the dogs, and not recognized at all 
by respectable foxes," there is somewhat to be said for his obliquity. Let us 
reason together. He howls o'nights — so do my neighbor's dogs. He thrusts 
his "triangular and elongated visage" into other people's affairs when 
they, perchance, are not about — so do a numerous army of two-legged critters 
who ought to know better, while they would speak with contempt of this coward. 
Suppose he has chewed up your lariat, or made away with your harness, did he 
ever manipulate a " corner," or misap- 
propriate the savings of widows and 
orphans ? Suppose while pursued by 
hunger he has fallen foul of a covey of 
young birds, answer me echo of a hun- 
dred wanton shots, did he ever kill for 
the sake of killing ? Granted that he 
waylays the incautious jack-rabbit, which 
thereupon "takes its last lesson in 

gnawing subjectively " — with a less * A, *OT IK %--r< 

defensible end have you not found cours- "a thoroughly vagabond outcast ix gray." 
ing the jack fair sport ? When game 

is afoot this lop-eared and large-jointed creature gathers together the best of 
his clan, that they too may lick their chops in expectation — is such unselfishness 
universal '? He was suckled by penury and reared in want and adversity, school- 
mothers of thiefdom everywhere — how much better pupils do we rear under 
such tutelage? He is patient under great provocation — I wish we all were. 
You rail him craven and a poltroon, but my word for it, let your dog corner him 
and ye shall know the mettle of his pasture. The fox now is a royal fellow, 
nevertheless he has more cunning than the prisoner at the bar. Would you 
apply to quadrupeds the human law making it a disgrace only to be detected 
in wrong-doing? The fox is sly anil escapes — he is a good fellow: tin- coyote 
is sly, but he has the courage of his theft, ami so he and all his yelping progeny 
arc dastards. It is true he does yelp, and his discordant clangor fills the wilder- 
ness, but we are disinheriting the savages now — the coyote, the buffalo, and 
the red Indian — and who — who would not make his voice heard under such 
distressing circumstances? 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. Ill 



(Qai^ets. 



IT is not the farmer, or the stockman, or anybody else living in the state, 
who wants to know about t lie markets of Kansas. Their chief difficulty is 
to supply the demand, local, home, and foreign. There are competing 
markets in all directions. Unfold the map again, and look at the new 
country to the southwest whose development defies all known ratios of increase. 
Notice that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, after running through 
Kansas, penetrates into Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and all the country 
where the shadow of Montezuma yet lingers in the sunset, and then think 
how the population is fed. Turn to the east, and see the same road making 
straight for the Missouri River. Kansas City is there, a distributing point 
for the whole of Kansas. Thence to Chicago and St. Louis the surface of the 
country is one net-work of competing railroad lines. In addition, the Kansan 
finds himself within the scope of immediate benefit to be derived from river 
transportation, the success of which will make his land as valuable as any in 
the Ohio Valley, for he will be brought as near to the market in price of trans- 
portation, which is the only measure of distance. 



Horn So Rai^ Opp. 



MOU live, pernaps, in an eastern state, and have the impression that 
Kansas is a great distance off. Such impressions are common enough 
respecting regions even less remote, for unless a man's interests are in 
some way related thereto, a state or country which is only a name to him 
has rarely an exact relative place in his mind. Without traveling by pneumatic 
tube, limited express, or any other means of rapid dispatch, you can reach the 
Valley of the Arkansas River in three days and a half from any part of New 
England, in three days from New York, in two days and a half from Buffalo 
and Pittsburgh, in thirty-six hours from Chicago, in twenty-four hours from St. 
Louis, in ten or twelve hours from Kansas City. Tickets at greatly reduced 
rates, either single or round trip, and freight rates, can be obtained at all prin- 
cipal railroad stations on through lines. If all the desired information cannol 
be obtained through your nearest station agent, write to the A. T. & S. I'. 
Land Commissioner, Topeka, and he will direct you how to get rates. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



93 



Dl^AWBAG^S. 



"NXIOUS to get at rock-bottom facts, the candid reader asks what 

about cyclones, grasshoppers, mid droughts. These are possible 

^ scourges, but it is nonsense to talk of Kansas being a more likely field 

for ravage than any other western state. There are forty afflictions of 

nature common elsewhere which are never known in Kansas; but who ever 

heard of Minnesota being condemned as worthless because the winters there are 





THE OLD WAV. 



destructive, or Illinois and Iowa, because chinch bugs sometimes eat up the 
crops? Who hears the Atlantic coast states condemned utterly if pleuro- 
pneumonia ravages the herds, or the Mississippi Valley states when floods 
devastate the fields? It is well to bear in mind that calamitous droughts in 
Kansas have been exceptional, never seriously crippling the farmer who had 




AND THE NEW. 

first acquainted himself with the capabilities of the section to which he moved. 
While as for the farmer who fails, the chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred 
that his lack of judgment would bring failure wherever he might be. Most 
of the stories on this subject are pure invention. Statistics show that dur- 
ing the growing months of the past ten years — mark that — the rainfall in 



94 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



Kansas was greater than in the states of Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, 
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut or New York. Yet these are considered moderately comfort- 
able states to live in. The cyclones, so called, are mostly aerial, and touch — 
when the}' touch at all — only small portions of the vast prairies. Call to mind 
where the latest have done their dismantling. Was it not in Illinois and 
Indiana? Yet Kansas has its drawbacks. What land has not? The fat valleys 
of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Jordan? Has not your state, and yours, a 
fly or two in its pot of ointment ? What say you to wayward climate, untimely 
frosts, long and cruel winters (here unknown), potato bugs, apple blights, stony 
fields, high-priced lands, high-priced fertilizers, weedy highways, high winds, 
floods, droughts (the whole of new England was blistered by dry weather in 
1882), sunstrokes (who ever heard of one in Kansas?), boss rule, aggressive 
pauperism, heavy taxation — shall we go further? We think not. And do you 
ask if you shall come to Kansas? Every man must bear his own burden, each 
must look and decide for himself. Some cannot, and some should not remove 
hither. A good-for-nothing where he now is will be the worst kind of a good- 
for-nothing in Kansas, for like another animal of sluggish blood he will croak. 
Some again may and should come, and with all practical dispatch. But lei n<> 
rational soul be discouraged by flippant and sensational writers who offend all 
reason. No one state has all the advantages or all the drawbacks. Spy out the 
one combining most of the former, to fewest of the latter. After you have 
done so, we may safely ask, how stands Kansas? 




'ilN-ls liril.IUXG STONE. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



95 



©HE E?I^OFITS ON (©AWLE. 




IT is an easy matter to make attractive estimates of the profits of cattle 
raising, but judging from those which have appeared in print it is not so 
easy to be accurate and enticing at the same time. The writer of the Pic- 
ture Book congratulates himself in having secured what he believes to 
I"- a trustworthy computation. For this contribution he is indebted to Mr. 

H. R. Hilton, superintendent of the 
Kansas ranch of the Western Land 
and Cattle Company, who prepared 
the estimate exclusively for these 
pages. The showing will not satisfy 
where dividends of 30 to ."ill per 
cent, are expected — it is no more 
than fair to say so much at the 
outset. Mr. Hilton is conservative in 
his figuring?, but the writer has faith 
to believe that such an estimate is 
the one capitalists will prefer. All 
that can be made anywhere in the business is within reach of the cat- 
tlemen of Southwest Kansas. Yet while cattle raising has few risks, the 
most sanguine will allow that animal life is sometimes subject to disaster, 
and he acts wisely who provides for a reason- 
able loss. On a six years' contract Mr. Hilton 
shows a profit of 147 per cent., or an average 
of '24.' per cent, a year. The chances are good j 
— many men would say certain — for larger 
earnings, on any well managed ranch. " If you 
want a better result — though the prudent in- ; 
vestor "ill not ask it — you will have to throw- 
in more range and reduce quantity of land 
purchased," writes Mr. Hilton. "You see," he 
adds, "I have put in taxes — quite a heavy 
item, but one that has to be mel on a part of the 

purchase now, and will have to lie on all as 

soon as the unorganized counties of the states are organized." '1 lie notes 

appended to the estimate give further explanations. 




■HORN. 



9<3 THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 

ESTIMATE OF PROFITS 

Of a ranch of 10,400 acres (with free range of equal amount 

adjoining) in Southwest Kansas, based upon a 

Capital Stock of $65,000. 



investment in real estate, etc. 

10,400 acres at $2 $20,S00 

16 miles outside fence at $175 2,800 

6 miles division fence at 1175 1,050 

Buildings 1,350 

Equipment 851 1 

$26,850 

INVESTMENT in stock. 

500 cows with 300 calves at $40 $20,000 

250 vearling steers at $20 5,000 

250 2-year old steers at $30 7,500 

15 bulls at $100 1,500 

10 horses at $50 500 

1 mule team, harness and wagon 400 

34, HOC) 

Balance cash on hand Aug. 1, 1883 3,250 

Capital stock paid up $65,000 

Statement at End of First Year. Arc;. 1. 1884. 
Resources. 

Cash balance brought forward $3,250 

500 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 490 at 835 17,150 

196 heifer calves at $10 1,960 

196 bull calves at $10 1,960 

150 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 141 ai $20 2,940 

150 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 147 at $20 2,940 

L25 yearling steers purchased during the year at $20 2,500 

250 2-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 24.") at $30 7,350 

250 3-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 245 at $45 (sold) 

15 bulls at $100 1,500 

10 horses at $50 >< » » 

Mule team, wagon, etc 400 

$42,450 

Cash from sale of 245 steers at 845 $11,025 

Real estate and equipments 26,850 

37,875 

Total . ... $80,325 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 97 

Liabilitit s. 

Capital stock $85,000 

[Expenses during the year as per expense account : 

3 herders at $300 . ." 11,080 

1 foreman Oi >i i 

300 bushels of corn at GO cents 180 

50 tons of hay at $3 150 

Supplies for ranch 500 

Incidentals "2i M • 

2,710 

Taxes on land and cattle 650 

125 yearling steers at $20 2,500 

Paid 7 per cent, dividend 4,550 

Undivided surplus 4,915 

Total $80,325 

Statement at End of Second Year. Aug. 1. 1885. 
Resources. 

Cash on hand Aug. 1, 1884, as per cash book $3,80.5 

490 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 480 at $35 in. si hi 

147 2-year old heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 144 at $27.50 3,960 

222 heifer calves at $10 2,220 

222 bull calves at $10 2,220 

196 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 192 at $20 3,840 

196 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 192 at $20 3,840 

272 2-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 267 at $30 8,010 

245 3-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 240 at $45 (sold) 

25 bulls, less 2 per cent, loss, 24 at $100 2,400 

12 horses, less 2 per cent, loss, 11 at $50 550 

Mule team, wagon, etc 400 

$48,Ht;, 

Cash from sale of 240 steers at $45 $10,800 

Real estate and equipments 26,850 

37,650 

Total $85, ; 55 

Liabilitu s. 

Capital stock $65,000 

Expenses, as per expense account 2,81 N I 

Taxes 700 

10 bulls at $100 1,000 

2 horses at $50 LOO 

Paid 10 per cent, dividend 6,500 

Balance undivided surplus 9,655 

Total $85,755 



98 THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 

Statement at End of Third Yeah. Aug. 1, 1886. 
Resources. 

Cash on hand Aug. 1, 1885, as per cash book ' $3,565 

624 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 611 (61 sold), 550 at 835 20,250 

192 2-year old heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 188 at $27.50 5,170 

25? heifer calves at $10 2,570 

257 bull calves at $10. 2,570 

222 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 217 at $20 4,340 

222 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 217 at $20 4,340 

192 2-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 188 at $30 5,640 

267 3-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 262 at $45 (sold) 

32 bulls, less 2 per cent, loss, 31 at $100 3,100 

15 horses, less 2 per cent, loss, 15 at $50 750 

Mule team, wagon, etc , 400 

$52,695 

Cash from sales of 262 3-year old steers at $45 $11,790 

Cash from sales of 61 cows at $35 2,135 

Real estate and equipment 26, s 5< ' 

— 40,775 

Total $93,470 

Liabilities. 

Capital stock $65, 

Expenses, as per expense account 3,000 

Taxes 800 

Purchased 8 bulls at $100 800 

Purchased 4 horses at $50 \>j n l 

Paid 12 per cent, dividend 7,800 

Undivided surplus 15,870 

Total $93,470 

Statement at End of Fourth Year, Aug. 1, 1887. 
Resources. 

Cash on hand Aug. 1, 1886, as per cash book $4,890 

738 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 723 (144 sold), 579 at $35 21 1,265 

217 2-vear old heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 212 at $27.50 5,830 

330 heifer calves at $10 3,330 

330 bull calves at $10 3,330 

257 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 252 at $20 5,040 

257 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 25'.' at $'„'0 5,040 

.' 1 i 2-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 212 at $30 6,360 

184 3-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 180 at $45 (sold) 

41 bulls, less 2 per cent, loss, 40 at $100 4,000 

18 horses, less 2 per cent, loss, 17 at $45 ? 25 

Mule team, wagon, etc 400 

$59,150 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 99 

Cash from sale of 180 steers at $45 $8, Ion 

( 'ash from sale of 144 cows at $35 5,040 

Heal estate 26,851 1 

39,990 

Total $99,140 

Liability s. 

Capital stock $65, 

Expenses, as per expense account 3,200 

Taxes 800 

Purchased 10 bulls at $100 1,000 

Purchased 3 horses at $50 150 

Paid 12 per cent, dividend 7,800 

Undivided surplus 21,190 

Total $99,1 tO 

Statement at End of Fifth Year, Aug. 1, 1888. 
Resources. 

Cash on hand Aug. 1, 1887, as per cash book $5,080 00 

791 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 775 (7G sold), 099 at $35] 24,465 00 

252 2-year old heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 247 at $27.50 6,175 00 

359 heifer calves at $10 3,590 ( 10 

359 bull calves at $10 3,590 00 

330 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 323 at $20 6,460 00 

330 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 323 at $22.50 7,26' 50 

252 '-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 247 at $33 S,151 00 

212 3-vear old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 212 at $45 (sold) 

50 bulls, less 2 per cent, loss, 49 at $100 4,900 00 

17 horses, less 2 per cent, loss, 16 at $45 720 00 

Mule team, wagon, etc 4< " » 00 

$70,798 50 

Cash from sale of 76 cows at $35 $2,660 

Cash from sale of 212 steers at $45 9,540 

Real estate 26,850 

39,05(i 00 

Total $109,848 50 

Liabilities. 

I !apital stock $65, ) 00 

Expenses, as per expense account 3, 51111 no 

Taxes 850 00 

Purchased 10 bulls at $100 1,000 00 

Paid 12 per cent, dividend 7. sun 00 

Undivided surplus 31,698 50 

T.tal $109,848 5ii 



100 THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 

Statement at End of Sixth Year. Aug. 1, 1889. 
Resources. 

Cash on hand Aug. 1, 1888, as per cash book $4,130 

946 cows, less 2 per cent, loss, 927 (91 sold), 836 at 840 33,440 

323 2-year old heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 316 at $30 9,480 

426 heifer calves at 812 5,112 

426 bull calves at 812 5,112 

359 yearling heifers, less 2 per cent, loss, 352 at 825 8,800 

359 yearling steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 352 at $22.50 7,920 

323 2-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 316 at $35 11,060 

247 3-year old steers, less 2 per cent, loss, 242 at $47.50 (sold) 

54 bulls, less 2 per cent, loss, 53 at $75 3,975 

20 horses, less 2 per cent, loss, 20 at $45 900 

Mule team, wagon, etc 350 

$90,279 

Cash from sale of 91 cows at $35 83,185 

Cash from sale of 242 steers at 847.50 11,495 

Real estate 26,850 

41,530 

Total $131 ,809 

Liabilities. 

Capital stock $65,000 

Expenses, as per expense account 3,750 

Taxes 900 

Purchased 5 bulls at $100 500 

Purchased 4 horses at 850 200 

Paid 15 per cent, dividend 9,750 

Undivided surplus 51,70'.) 

Total 8131,809 

SUMMARY AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT SHOWING STATUS OF INVEST- 
MENT AT THE END OF SIX YEARS. 

STOCK ON HAND. 

836 cows at $40 833,440 

316 2-year old heifers at 830 9,480 

426 heifer calves at $12 5,112 

426 bull calves at $12 5,112 

352 yearling heifers at 825 8,800 

352 yearling steers at 822.50 7,920 

316 2-year old steers at $35 1 1,060 

53 bulls at $75 3,975 

20 horses at $45 900 

Mule team, wagon, etc 350 

Cash value of live stock $86,149 



THE KANSAS PICTUBE BOOK. 101 

Casli on hand, as per cash book 3,710 

Real estate at cost 26,850 

Total value of all property 1116,709 

Deduct capital stock 65,1 II II > 

Surplus $51,709 

Add — Dividend first year, 7 per cent 84,550 

I dividend second year, 10 per cent 0,500 

Dividend third year, 12 per cent 7, SOU 

Dividend fourth year, 12 per cent 7y800 

Dividend fifth year, 12 per cent 7,800 

Dividend sixth year, 15 per cent 9,750 

44,200 

Surplus and cash dividends, in 6 years, being 147 per cent, profit on 

invested capital 195,909 



Tank. .,'\i" 

-no- 



&r 



NOTES ON THE FOREGOING. 

The land is supposed to be located anywhere in Southwest Kansas, west of 
Great Bend, and where the same is not naturally watered, the appraisement 
given is intended to cover cost of wells, wind-mills, pumps, etc., bv means of 
which an abundant supply of water for such a herd can be cheaply supplied. 

The cost of fencing is calculated on 
10,400 acres in a square body, to be 
divided into one large pasture and two 
small ones, as roughly shown in accom- 
panying diagram. 

The breeding cows are to be kept 
within the inclosed pastures with the bulls, 
during the breeding season. Steers and 
stock cattle to be herded on free range 
outside, during the summer and fall 
months, thus saving part of the fenced 
pastures for winter grazing. 

The class of cattle upon which esti- 
mate is based is native Kansans of good grade, the bulls thoroughbred short- 
horn. 

The increase from cows over two years old is estimated at 80 per cent., and 
from heifers bringing calves at two years old, 40 per cent., which is a vary 
moderate estimate where there is an average of three bulls to every hun- 
dred cows, all running in an inclosed pasture, giving fullest assurance of the 
highest possible crop of calves. 






THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 103 

Two per cent, per annum is allowed for losses on all classes of stock. Cattle 
raised on the land, and properly cared for, will suffer lightly from losses by 
storm, disease, etc. 

From year to year the cow herd is weeded of all the old and barren cattle, 
which are fattened and sold to realize original cost. The herd is being constantly 
improved by the addition of heifers of higher grade. 

A uniform price of §10 for bull calves has been maintained in the estimate, 
whereas the use of thoroughbred bulls would have justified the invoicing of 
these animals at from §25 to §50 as grade bulls, for which there is always a 
great demand, well-bred bull calves being readily taken at such prices after 
weaning time, for use with the southwestern herds. 

Liberal additions are made from year to year to the bull herd to insure a full 
crop of calves. Many of the bulls placed in the herd the first year would 
necessarily have to be exchanged with a neighboring herd in the third or fourth 
year, but this could be done without materially affecting the value. 

The estimate presupposes that the investor gives a partial oversight to the 
management of his property, such, for instance, as buying the original herd, 
marketing the steers, etc. 

By careful management in breeding and culling out inferior animals, the 
herd should far exceed in value the estimate placed upon 
it in the final summary. 

The real estate investment is appraised in the final 
statement at first cost. It would have been a very 
reasonable estimate to have placed its value at the end 
of six years at double the cost price; but the object 
of this statement is especially to show how such land 
can be profitably utilized while held for a rise in value. branded. 

The estimate does not show any extravagant profits in the cattle business. 
It is considerably below the average of what has been done in the past six 
years. As already said, it is intended to be conservative and practical, and 
show what can be safely depended upon, not what is possible — for it is a possible 
thing to exceed this estimate \!"> to ~>n per cent, under favorable circumstances. 




THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. ]05 



Fl^OM THE (DlSSOUl^I &5EST. 




'HE reader will not fail to have noticed that the name of a great railway 
company appears frequently in these pages. To write anything about 
the prosperity of Kansas and omit all reference to that company would 
be unjust, nay, impossible. The history of the settlement of Kansas is 
the history of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. It has contributed, 
and will continue to contribute, more than any other single factor to the growth 
of the state. Without its energy and capital, many parts of a now rich domain 
would yet be for all purposes "as unsettled as the 'great lone land' on the 
shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria." Looking at what has been accomplished, 
and forgetting the vicissitudes through which the infant enterprise was guided, 
the undertaking does not seem to have been so great a work. Twent v vears ago, 
however, how many men — count them on your two hands — dared send their 
money to Kansas and "the desert ?" The few who did have reaped the harvest ; 
but theirs were the brains to plan and the hands to execute. We cannot afford 
to forget these things. To witness so soon a vindication of their judgment 
must be gratifying indeed to the sturdy New Englanders who risked fortunes 
on mere possibilities, at a time when Kansas was debatable territory, and the 
rich country beyond lay all unproductive as it had lain since the great upheaval. 
The scope of this book calling for close attention to the interests of the 
stock raiser and the home seeker, more has been said about the Land Depart- 
ment than about any other branch of the A. T. & S. F. management. But 
there is a system of administration in every branch of the company's service 
which challenges admiration. The writer speaks of these things as an outsider. 
To make it a personal matter, he has some knowledge of a small part of the 
work touching land interests, but officially none at all relating to anything out- 
side of that. He sees, as everyone must see whose work or pleasure brings him 
in contact with the company, efficiency everywhere. Like the men themselves, 
the names of those who contribute to this organization are to be found in their 
proper places — president, vice-president, managers, superintendents, passenger 
agent, and so on through the list; and he is a sorry misanthrope who would 
withhold recognition of their splendid talents. 



I 

■I. 








THE A'.l.V.s.i.v PICTURE BOOK. 107 



I7OW TO GET IiAND. 




HE homestead law gives to a settler, on condition of permanent 

improvement and continued residence for five years, 160 acres of land, 

either inside or outside of the railroad limits. The only costs to him 

are those of the land office, which, including final costs, do not exceed $20 

for every 160 acres. Honorably discharged soldiers are allowed a deduction 

from the five years of the length of time of their military service, but they 

must actually reside on the land at least one year. 

The preemption law permits any citizen, or person who has declared his 
intention of becoming such, who does not already own 320 acres or more of 
land, to locate 160 acres within railroad limits at $2.50 per acre, or outside of 
railroad limits at 81.25 per acre. The only other conditions are that he shall 
make permanent improvements, and reside for six months on the property. 

The timber culture law gives to any citizen of the United States, or one 
who declares his intention of becoming such, 160 acres, either within or without 
the limits of the railroad, on condition that he plant one-sixteenth of the land 
with trees, and cultivate the same for eight years. Laws in some of the west- 
ern states and territories make additional inducements to settlers to plant trees, 
in the way of paying money direct to the settlers at so much per acre, or in 
reducing the amount of their taxes. 

But the great bulk of desirable government lands lying within the limits 
of railroad grants have been taken possession of under the homestead, pre- 
emption, and timber culture acts. It is better to buv land within a few 
miles of a railroad than to procure without cost, under government acts, lands 
located a considerable distance from railroads. The saving of horseflesh in 
drawing produce to market will generally, in a short time, make up more than 
the difference. So then, as a general rule, those who desire to locate in Kansas 
should purchase lands from the railroad in preference to homesteading or pre- 
empting them. The terms of the A. T. & S. F. railroad are moderate, and the 
company holds out special inducements to immigrants. What it desires is pop- 
ulation. It is the increased business for the road growing out of this increased 
population which it is working for. And it does not ask the settler to come 
into an ice-bound, undeveloped country, where he can expect nothing for years 
to come except the hardships of pioneer life, but rather into a land of sunshine 
and green fields, where lie will be surrounded by good neighbors and the gen- 
tler influences of human contact. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. 



109 



I^AILI^OAD LlANDS IN I^ANSAS. 




'HE Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company has nearly one- 
half of its original grant of 3,000,000 acres, lying chiefly in the famous 
Arkansas Valley, still for sale, at from II to $10 per acre. The unsold 
lands embrace some of the best grazing tracts in the West. The tillable 
area is fast decreasing, but there are still good farming lands to be bought of 
the company. Besides having a wide area of land in a prosperous and well 
settled state for the settler or investor to select from, this railroad offers tin- 
further inducement of low prices, long credit, and interest on deferred pay- 
ments at the moderate rate of seven per cent. A purchase may be made on 
eleven years' credit; or if on six years' time, two years' time, or for cash, with 
various deductions from the appraised price, as shown in the following terms 

ELEVEN YEARS' CREDIT. 

Terms No. 1. — Eleven years' credit with seven per cent, interest. The first 
payment at date of purchase is one-tenth of the principal and seven per cent. 
interest on the remainder. At the end of the first and second years, only the 
interest at seven per cent, is paid; the third year and each year thereafter, one- 
tenth of the principal is paid, with seven per cent, annual interest on the bal- 
ance until the whole is paid. 

SIX YEARS' CREDIT— Tex Pee Cent. Discount. 

Terms No. 2. — Six years' credit with seven per cent, interest. The first 
payment at date of purchase is one-sixth of the principal and seven per cent, 
interest on the remainder. The second payment at the end of the first year is 
only interest. Afterwards, one-sixth of the principal is paid and seven per cent, 
annual interest on the remainder until the whole is paid. A discount of ten 
per cent, is made from the appraised price when land is bought on these terms, 
and the payments come as below. 

Example — 160 acres, at $5 per acre, bought August 1, 1883, would amount 
to $800. Ten per cent, off would reduce it to ^i'Ju, and the payments would be 
a.s follows: 



Date <it' Payment. 


Principal. 


Interest. 


Total. 




Sl 'JO,! Ill 


$42.00 
42.00 
83.60 
25.20 

Hi Ml 

8.40 


$162.00 
42.00 


August 1 1885 


120.00 
120.00 
120.00 
120.00 
120.00 


L53.60 


August 1 1886 


145.20 


August 1 1887 


136 80 




128.40 




120.00 




$720.00 


$168.00 


$888.00 







110 



THE KANSAS I'hTVRE BOOK. 



TWO YEARS' CREDIT— Twenty Per Cent. Discount. 

Terms No. 3. — Three payments. In consideration of the purchaser's pay- 
ing one-third of the principal at time of purchase, with seven per cent, interest 
on the remainder, and the balance in two annual payments, the company makes 
a discount from the appraised price of twenty per cent. 

CASH PURCHASE— Twenty-five Per Cent. Discount. 

Terms No. 4. — This is a sale where the whole amount of purchase money 
is paid down and deed given. A discount of twenty-five per cent, is made from 
the appraised price. 

The prices are regulated by the quality of the land, distance from a railroad 
station, access to running streams, timber, building stone, etc. The terms and 
appraised prices are arbitrary, and cannot be changed except by approval of 
the directors. Patents completed and titles perfect. 




EXCUSE HASTE. 



THE KANSAS PICTURE BOOK. Ill 



Sources op Information. 



Application for further information about Kansas may be made in person or by letter to 
any of the following agents of the Atchison. Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad : 

LAND DEPARTMENT AGENTS. 

A. S. Johnson, Land Commissioner, Topeka, Kansas. 

Jno. E. Frost, Chief Clerk and General Agent, Topeka, Kansas. 

W. R. Linn, General Agent Middle Stales, Springfield, Ohio. 

Geo. B. Dusinberrk, General Agent New York and New Jersey, Geneva, X. Y. 

M. Solomon, Special Agent, 46 ('lark Street, Chicago. 

II. L. CARGILL, Canadian Agent. 24 York Street, Toronto. Canada. 

Louis Ingerson, Emigrant Agent, 2 Bridge Street, opp. Castle Garden, New York. 
II. E. Moss, Passenger and hand Agent, opp. Union Depot. Kansas City, Mo. 
Wm. Lescher, Train anil Field Agent, opp. Union Depot, Kansas City, Mo. 

S. S. (in. Train and Field Agent. Topeka, Kansas. 

PASSENGEE DEPARTMENT AGENTS. 

\V. F. White. (ieneral Passenger and Ticket Agent, Topeka. Kansas. 

John L. Truslow, General Western Passenger Agent. San Francisco, Cal. 

W. L. Malcolm. General Eastern Agent. 410 Broadway, New York. 

Henry Farnum, Traveling Passenger Agent. 419 Broadway, New York. 

S. W. Manning, New England Agent, 1!»T Washington Street, Boston. 

J. W. Donald. Traveling Agent, 197 Washington Street. Boston. 

N. A. Dane. Passenger Agent, 12 Exchange Street, Buffalo. X. Y. 

II. L. Cargill, Canadian Agent, 24 York Street, Toronto, Canada. 

Geo. W. Pangborn, Passenger Agent. 155 4th Avenue. Pittsburgh, Pa. 

A. K. Lipmncott, Passenger Agent. 173 Walnut Street (Gibson House), Cincinnati, 0., and 

318 Main Street, Louisville. Ky. 
Frank T. Hendry, Passenger Agent, G!i W. Md. Street. Indianapolis, Ind. 
.1. 0. Phillippi, General Agent, ol Clark Street, Chicago. 111. 
Williamson Dunn, Traveling Agent, ">4 Clark Street, Chicago, 111. 
X. T. Spoor, General Agent. 320 Chestnut Street, St. Louis, Mo. 
S. M. Osgood. Passenger \gent. cor. 1st Avenue and 3d Street. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
C. I>. Palmer, Texas Passenger Agent. 733 Elm Street. Dallas. Texas. 
('has. II. Wood. General Agent, Kansas City, Mo. 
W. J. Jannev. Western Traveling Agent, Topeka. Kansas. 
W. R. PeaBODY, General Agent. Atchison, Kansas. 
A. P. Tanner. General Agent. Leavenworth, Kansas. 
Theo. F. Brown. General Agent, Denver, Col. 
('has. T. Parsons, Colorado Passenger Agent, Denver. Col 
IT. Bradley, Agent. Pueblo, Col. 
P. .1. Elvnn. General Agent. Salt Lake City, Utah. 
R. E. Comfort, Agent, Deniing. X. M. 
V. C. Gay, Agent, El Paso, Texas. 
W. H. Holabird. Tourist Agent, Topeka. Kansas. 




A 






y o •' o -*&. v «y o -.^s^. 




bV 



i 



.V 



^ *• 









-^ 



> 



V 



4 



^" 









,0 



< 







W ^ W **<? 



^"V \Wm&: 



-5- ,V 



ff * 







»"lo< 



*.°V 







*o. 



•;■ 



-lo^ • ■•■ J- • 




V -**o • ■ r, 








•> s 



4 u ^ : sk- "*- 

<v 'T^ *o -. . . * A <v 



* V 















.° ♦ ^ 
























\3 -. . . • A 



**. 



^ :'«* 









«/> 



.0 •> 









o. 










\2 









^0 



























